McCLURE’S
MAGAZINE
JULY IQ09 FIFTEEN CENTS
S. S.MCCLURE COMPANY
FORTY-FOUR. EAST TWENTY-THIRD STREET N Y ONE HUNDRED AND EIGHTY-SIX OXFORD STREET WEST LONDON ENGLAND
[pgbrk] Charlotte Russe
NABISCO
NABISCO as an accompaniment to other dainties invariably adds to the attractiveness ol the dish so graced.
The recipe here given is but a suggestion ol the possibilities ol
S NABISCO
Sugar ^Wafers
In ten cent tins
Also in twenty-five cent tins
Charlotte Russe
Pour a little lemon or strawberry jelly into a plain or fancy mold and allow it to become firm. Then 1 the sides of the mold with Nabisco Sugar Wafers.
Dissolve one heaping tablespoonful powdered gelatine in half a pint of milk, allow to cool, add gradually to half a pint of w h i p p e d cream, add two tablespoonfuls sugar, and half a teaspoonful of vanilla extract.
Mix carefully and pour into prepared mold. Turn when set.
NATIONAL BISCUIT COMPANY
[pgbrk] McClure’s—The Marketplace of the World
Tiffany and Co.
Tiffany Diamond Rings Can only be purchased direct from Tiffany and Co.’s establishments in New York, Paris, and London
Tiffany and Co.’s facilities for securing the choicest gems enable them to offer many distinct advantages in quality and value
Purchases of solitaire diamond and other rings, ranging from very moderate prices upward, can be made easily and satisfactorily through the Correspondence Department
Upon advice as to requirements, with limit of price, Tiffany and Co. will send photographs, cuts or descriptions of what their stock affords. Selections of rings or other articles will be sent on approval to persons known to the house or to those who will make themselves known by satisfactory references
The Tiffany Blue Book, 700 pages, sent upon request
Fifth Avenue and 37th Street New York
1
[pgbrk] McClure’s—The Marketplace of the World
THE,
Steinwsy
is to-day the only high-grade piano in the United States which is made and controlled by the direct descendants of its original founder.
All the rest have been forced to seek the alliance or amalgamation with manufacturers of cheap commercial pianos.
Thus time-honored names have become mere trade-marks, lacking every vestige of individuality.
Able to pursue its lofty ideals unfettered by commercial exigencies, the house of Steinway has exerted all its energies in but one direction, with the flattering result that to-day the Steinway is proclaimed everywhere—
THE STANDARD PIANO
OF THE WORLD
Steinway Pianos can be bought of
I • j Cl • II MINIATURE GRAND
any authorized Steinway dealer at ebonizedcaee New York prices, with cost of transportation added.
Illustrated catalogue and prices sent on request and mention of this magazine.
STEINWAY and SONS,
Steinway Hall,
107 and 109 East 14th Street, New York.
Subway Express Station at the Door.
2
[pgbrk] MCCLURE'S MAGAZINE
S. S. McClure, Pres.; Cameron Mackenzie, Treas.; Curlis P. Bradv, Secy.
S. S. McCLURE CO.
44--60 East 23d Street, New York 186 Oxford Street West, London
Contents for July, 1909
COVER DESIGN BY WALTER JACK DUNCAN
Portrait of Mr. William Archer.................................. Frontispiece
AUTHOR OF “BLACIC AND WHITE IN THE SOUTH," PAGE 324
Outposts of Empire. A Story Eleanor Stuart 229
ILLUSTRATIONS BY WLADYSLAW T. BENDA
Gettysburg: A Boy’s Experience of the Battle . Albertus McCreary 243
ILLUSTRATIONS BY ROLLIN KIRBY
What We Know About Cancer . . Burton J. Hendrick 234
ILLUSTRATED WITH PHOTOGRAPHS
Lillie. A Story...................................Hams Merton Lyon 270
ILLUSTRATIONS BY W. GLACKENS ,
The Story of a Reformer’s Wife . . Mrs. Fremont Older 277
ILLUSTRATED WITH PHOTOGRAPHS
The Little Harmonizer of His Threefold Nature. A Story .... Marion Hamilton Carter 294
ILLUSTRATIONS BY ROLLIN KIRBY
A Midland Twilight. A Poem .... Edith Wyatt 302
Brutality. A Story.......................................Lincoln Colcord 303
ILLUSTRATIONS BY ARTHUR S. COVEY
Cleveland s Venezuela Message . . . George F. Parker 314
ILLUSTRATED WITH PHOTOGRAPHS
Black and White in the South .... William Archer 324 -"If I Have Kept My Heart Sweet." A Poem
Mildred McNeal-Sweeney 338
Editorial.........................................Quitman Kohnke, M. D. 339
A Defense of the New Orleans Health Authorities
Entered as Second-Class Matter at New York, New York. Copyright, 1909, by
The S. S. McCLURE CO., New York
SUBSCRIPTION TERMS: In the U. S., Mexico, Cuba, and American Possessions $1.50 per year. In Canada $2.00 per
year. In all other countries in the Postal Union $2.50 per year
THREE YEARS’ SUBSCRIPTION IN U.S. $3.50
AN ORDER BLANK ENCLOSED WITH THE MAGAZINE IS NOTICE THAT YOUR
SUBSCRIPTION HAS EXPIRED
3
[pgbrk] McClure’s—The Marketplace of the World
SHOT GUNS
Eliphalet Remington began to make Remington guns and rifles at his forge in 1816. The Remington make is the oldest in America.
Yet, to-day Remington Ideas are the youngest, the most progressive, the most modern, embodied in any gun.
The Remington Autoloading Gun loads itself. A simple and practical attainment of the gunmakers’ greatest ambition— to make the recoil do the ejecting and reloading.
7 he Remington Rump Gun is another triumph.
These two Remington repeaters are in a class by'themselves. They are Solid Breech, Hammerless.
Booklet J, “Remington Experiences ”
THE REMINGTON ARMS COMPANY, Ilion, N. Y. Agency, 315 Broadway, New York City
The Steel Lining is the Latest Step Forward in Shell Making
We have made shot shells which for over 40 years have been recognized as the standard of shell quality.
We find after these 40 years’ experience that a tough band of steel around the smokeless powder makes our Arrow and Nitro Club shells better, stronger and safer.
The reason is simple—The powder rests against this Steel Lining, not against the paper.
We admit .it costs more to make Arrow and Nitro Club shells with the Steel Lining. Are you going to shoot ordinary shells when you can buy UMC STEEL LINED SHELLS from your dealer at no extra cost? Write Dept. 9 for Game Laws THE UNION METALLIC CARTRIDGE CO. Bridgeport, Conn.
Agency, 315 Broadway, New York City
SHOT
SHELLS
for40 years
the best
4
[pgbrk] “ Hardly a line of manufacturing that does not develop every “ year some new thing which represents the very brightest achieve-“ ment in that line. This is news of which you would in most “cases never hear except through advertising.
“ Kipling on receiving a batch of magazines from a friend “ who had torn out the back pages to save postage, wrote, ‘ Next “time, you keep the front part and send me the ads. I can “ write stories myself.’ ”
Good and persistent advertising in publications like McClure’s not only influences new business but is insurance for the old.
Advertising Manager
Automobiles and Accessories
A. B. C. Motor Vehicle Co. ... 56
Atlas Rubber Co. . .... 57
Cook Motor Vehicle Co................44
Fisk Rubber Co. 4....................66
Goodrich Co., B. F...................59
G. and J. Tire Co......................42
Packard Motor Car Co.................73
Banking and Financial
Bankers Trust Co.....................77
Calvert Mortgage and Deposit Co. . 58
Petry and Co...........................36
Rollins and Sons, E. H..............76
Trowbridge and Nlver Co. ... 56
Bath Room Fixtures
Standard Sanitary Co..............75
Boats, Motors, Etc.
Detroit Boat Co...................52
Gile Boat and Engine Co.............60
Gray Motor Co.....................72
Mich. Steel Boat Co...............52
Michigan Steel Boat Co. ... 62
Pierce Engine Co..................42
Roper and Co., C. F....................72
Rushton, Inc., J. H..................58
Truscott Boat Mfg. Co. . . . .44
Waterman Marine Motor Co. . . 48
Building and Construction
Atlas Portland Cement Co. . . .61
Cabot, Samuel........................44
Caldwell Co., W. E...................39
Cleveland Varnish Co.................68
Grand Rapids Plaster Co. ... 76
Mershon and Morley Co..................57
National Lead Co.....................34
Guide to “The Marketplace of the World”
Samuel Hopkins Adams writes in Collier’s Weekly on advertising in part as follows :
“The man who confines himself to the ‘reading matter’ of a “ modern, high-class magazine is getting only part of what he pays “for. The best experts of the day are striving in a hundred “phases of endeavor to find something that will attract and “ amuse him.
5
[pgbrk] McClure’s—The Marketplace of the World
New Jersey Zinc Co. 39 For the home Krell Auto-Grand Piano Co. . 64
Niagara Hydraulic Engine Co. . 35 Hartshorn Shade Rollers Stein way and Sons
Pettyjohn Co 62 35 Victor Talking Machine Co. 18-19
Rider-Ericsson Engine Co. . 48 Pacific Electric Heating Co. 40
Parkhurst and Son, J. F. . 32 Office Equipment
Sargent and Co 72 Simplex Electric Heating Co. . 38 Automatic Adding Machine Co. 54
Standard Paint Co 41 Furniture Elliott-Fisher Co . 60
Trussed Concrete Steel Co. . 47 Felt and Tarrant Mfg. Co. 55
Union Fibre Co 60 Karpen and Bros., S 40 Rapid Computer Co. . 56
Levinger Mfg. Co 40 Royal Typewriter Co.
Cameras, Etc. May hew 25 Swan Pen (Mabie, Todd and Co.) . . 70
Eastman Kodak Co 27 Mitchell, Robt., Furniture Co. . 52 Typewriter Emporium . . 44
Nepera Division . Blair Camera Division 68 53 Heating and Lighting Systems Waterman Co., L. E. Weston Electric Co. . 28 7
Folmer and Schwing Div. 53 62 Optical Goods
Rochester Optical Co. 68 Glogau and Co 44
Peck-Williamson Co. 45 Bausch and Lomb Optical Co. . 76
Cutlery and Strops Spencer Heater Co 39 Goerz, C. P., Amer. Optical Co. . 70
AutoStrop Safety Razor Co. 66
Hosiery Publishers
Educational American Academy Dramatic Arts 16n Holeproof Hosiery Co. . Knotalr Hosiery Co 62 49 Burell Syndicate Century Co., The .... 11 . lOp
Bissell College of Photo-Engraving 15 Doubleday, Page and Co. . . 10
Bliss Electrical School . 16n Household Supplies McClure Co., S. S 8-58
Boys and Girls Schools 12, 13, 14, 15, McClure’s Tourist Agency . 9
16, 16a, 16b, 16c, 16d, 16e, l'6f, 16g, Bon Ami 17 National Press Association . . 16n
16h, 16i, 16j, 16k, 161, 16m Buffalo Specialty Co. (Liquid Veneer) 35 Puritan Pub. Co . 11
Bryant, F. A 16n Pearline 22 Sprague Pub. Co .16-0
Chicago Correspondence School Lawl6n Werner Co., The . 11
Chicago Kent College of Lav/ 16n Insurance
Chicago Musical College . 16m Fidelity and Casualty Co. . 22 Refrigerators
Columbian Correspondence College 16n Monroe Refrigerator Co. . 33
Cross Co., The 11
Detroit School of Lettering . 16n Jewelry and Silverware Stationery, Cards, Etc.
Illinois College of Photography 15 The R. Gregg Mfg. and Impt. Co. . 62 Mittineague Paper Co. . . 65
International Correspondence School 36 Meriden Britannia Co. . 70
The Landon School .... 16n Tiffany and Co 1
National Correspondence Institute 16n . 56
National Salesman’s Training Asso. 11 16n Miscellaneous Colgate and Co 4th cover
16n American Telephoned; Telegraph Co. 30 uaggett cc Kamsdell . 46
16n American Thermos Bottle Co. . 38 Ingram and Co., Fr’d’k F. 54
Universal Business Institute 16n Barnes, W. F. and Jno. 54 Lablache Face Powder . . 32
Berkshire Hills Sanatorium . 37 Mennen’s Toilet Powder . 66
Fire Arms Buffalo Llthia W’ater 37 Pinaud’s Hair Tonic.... . 33
43 58 56 Potter Drug and Chemical Co. (Cu
Colt’s Pat. Fire Arms Mfg. Co. . Hopkins and Allen Arms Co. . Chicago Projecting Co. . Clendening Apt. Hotel . . 50 .16-0 tlcura Soap) Sheffield Dentifrice Co. . . 51 . 38
Works 55 Du Pont, E. I., de Nemours Powder Co.50 T ravel
Marlin Fire Arms Co., The . 35 Clark, F. C 48
Remington Fire Arms . Winchester Arms Co. 4 71 Herschell-Spillman Co. . Judson Freight Co 46 42 Lackawanna R. R. Co. . New York Central Lines 33 43
Food Products La Reclama Cuban Factory Mead Cycle Co 51 42 Richelieu and Ontario Nav. Co. . W’here-To- Go- Bureau 42 16-0
Chiclets 74 Michigan Buggy Co 50 Wearing Apparel
Clicquot Club Co 31 Munter, Prof. Charles 60
Genesee Pure Food Co. (Jcll-O) 26 N. Y. News Co .16-0 67
Knox, Chas. B 74 Pond’s Extract 54 Chalmers Knitting Co. . 32
Lea and Perrins 74 Rat Biscuit Co 50 Cawston Ostrich Farm . 36
Mellin’s Food Co . 78 T. I. P. Canopy Co 44 Cluett, Peabody and Co. . 69
National Biscuit Co. . . . 2d cover Universal Supply Co. 37 Cooper Mfg. Co 46
National Starch Co . 24 Wanamaker, John 29 Crown Suspender Co. 32
Peter’s Chocolate .... . 54 Worthington Co Edgarton Mfg. Co., C. A. 62
Postum Cereal Co. (Grape-Nuts) . 23 Hawes, Von Gal 63
Shredded Wheat Co., The . 3d cover Musical Instruments, Etc. Reversible Collar Co. 34
Whitman and Son, Stephen F. . 52 Stein and Co., A. 48
Wilbur’s Chocolate Buds . 49 Columbia Phonograph Co. . 20- -21 Whitman and Co., Clarence (Solesette) 34
6
[pgbrk] McClure’s—The Marketplace of the World
Eastern
New York Philadelphia Boston Pittsburg: Atlanta
Central
Chicago
Indianapolis
Cincinnati
Minneapolis
Western
Saint Louis Kansas City Denver Dallas Omaha
Northern Electric and Mfg. Co., Montreal and Winnipeg.
Manufacturers of the famous “Bell” Telephone with which every business man is familiar.
Intercom, municating Telephones a Specialty
Pacific
San Francisco Los Angeles Seattle
Salt Lake City
7
[pgbrk] McClure’s—The Marketplace of the World
(•THE AUGUST McCLlJRE’S'.
Midsummer Fiction Number
Light, entertaining reading has been the controlling factor in making up this magazine. The fiction includes:
“ BETWEEN THE LIGHTS,” one of the best of Perceval Gibbon’s South African adventure stories.
“A CALIFORNIA CONSCIENCE,” a love story with a / most unusual plot, by Edith Wyatt.
“SEVEN COINS,” by M. Gauss, a writer who has won a large audience through McClure’s.
Other stories are: “ACCORDING TO MEREDITH,” by Mrs. Belloc Lowndes; “ MATTHEW,” by Adeline Knapp; “ MRS. PIPER’S LIMIT,” by G. E. McCulloch; and “FINNEGAN’S SWAN SONG,” by F. J. Louriet. The number will be rich in illustrations. Among the artists who contribute are F. C. Yohn, Franklin Booth, Rose Cecil O’Neill, Worth Brehm and W. J. Glackens.
THE STORY OF AN ALCOHOL SLAVE
The autobiography of a man who began the use of alcohol when a youth and has kept it up for thirty years. It is in no sense the hard luck story of a drunkard; it is more of an economic study. The man has kept account of what liquor has cost him in money.
Sir Harry Johnston, the famous writer and correspondent of the London Times, writes of American Rule in Cuba, and Jesse Macy, Professor of Political Science in Iowa College, shows how American courts stick to medieval iron-clad technical rules while British judicial processes have been radically reformed.
8
[pgbrk] McClure s—The Marketplace of the World
A Tour of the World in the
250,000 Miles of Travel
3,500 Pages of Descriptive Text
Through 30 Cities and Countries
Cost $250,000 and 20 Years’ Work
4,000 Halftone Etchings
30 Full-Page
Color Plates
'
{and you can secure all of them for a few cents a day)
PERHAPS YOU ARE NOT ONE of the
army of Americans which is now enjoying the interesting sights of the Old World ?
Business or some other cause prevented your taking the most fascinating and educating journey—you found yourself compelled to remain at home and forego the trip that possibly you had been planning. Is this so ? Then—-
Perhaps, too, you are not aware of the fact that all the pleasures, experiences and value of a foreign tour may be had for a tithe the cost of an actual tour, and without stirring from your own threshold ? We are prepared to demonstrate this to you.
If you will avail yourself of this opportunity to secure the Burton Holmes Travelogues, you will retain more vivid recollections of a trip through the strangest parts of the World, with the famous world-traveller, E. Burton Holmes, as companion and guide, than if you had made the actual tour alone.
In a series of splendid journeys Mr. Holmes unfolds before your eyes the beauties of travel in foreign lands, with such narrative skill, with so many strange experiences, incidents and humorous episodes, and so admirably illustrated by over 4,000 photographs taken on the spot by Mr. Holmes himself as to carry you in spirit over 22,000 miles of travel, through thirty of the most interesting countries and cities of the world.
It would cost you $50,000.00 and many years of your time to take these journeys; but don’t take our word for it.
—WRITE US TODAY and we will send you a beautifully illustrated booklet containing sample pages and color plates—a full description of the work, and tell you how you may secure the TRAVELOGUES for a few cents a day.
Mail the Coupon Now
McClure’s Tourists’ Agency
July McClure i
44 E. 23d St New York City
McClure’s Tourists’ Agency
44 East 23d St., New York City
Gentlemen:—I am interested the Burton Holmes Trav-elogues and will be glad to receive specimen pages in colors and to learn the terms upon which I can secure the ten handsome volumes referred to in the foregoing advertisement.
Name
Address
9
[pgbrk] McClure’s—The Marketplace of the World
Cfje Rummer jHobels
BY C. N. and A. M. WILLIAMSON
Author of “ The Lightning Conductor,** etc.
Set in Silver
Audrie Brendon
It’s full of thecharm of English highways and byways, as felt in a delightful motor trip with fascinating Audrie Brendon. Illustrated. $1.50.
BY MRS. HUMPHRY WARD
Author of ‘‘Robert Elsmere " “ Lady Rose s Daughter, etc.
Marriage a la Mode
Every American woman should read what the great English writer has to say of the American girl of to-day in her very notable new novel of international marriage and divorce. Illustrations in color. Fixed price, $1.20 (postage 12c).
Daphne Floyd
By the author of “In the Bishop’s Carriage,”etc.
Michael Thwaites’s Wife
BY MIRIAM MICHELSON
There are few novels of the year so absorbing and intensely dramatic as this story of twin sisters whose personalities and lives are strangely intertwined. Illustrated. $r.5o.
The Sequel to “ ‘Pigs is Pigs ”
Mike Flannery
BY ELLIS PARKER BUTLER
Some more genuinely laughable adventures that befell Mike Flannery of “ Pigs is Pigs ” fame. Every reader of “ Pigs ” will read them for they make a large addition to the joys of life. Illustrations. 50 cents postpaid.
With the Night Mail
By Rvidyarcl Kipling' Mr. Kipling’s remarkable tale of an aerial trip from London to Quebec in twelve hours (!)in the year 2000 A. D. gives us an intensely dramatic glimpse of the future civilization Illustrations. Fixed, price, $1.00 (postage 10 cents).
Comrades
By Thomas Dixon, Jr. An absorbing love story of intense personalities ; this powerful Anti-Socialistic romance is being read everywhere. Illustrations. $1.50.
The Climber
By E. F. Benson. A novel of rare literary finish and keenest insight that towers above most contemporary fiction. Fixed price, $1.40 (postage 12 cents).
Much Ado About Peter
By Jean Webster. An original and genuinely charming story of country life from the point of view of the servant quarters, by the author of “When Patty Went to College.” Illustrations. $1.50.
Roads of Destiny
By O. Henry. In the extreme variety of these inimitable stories, it is safe to say that this is the most reoresent-ative volume of tales that O. Henry has issued. Th“ie is a treat between its covers in store for every reader. $1.50
Salvator
By Perceval Gibbon. Readers of McClure’s who are acquainted with Perceval Gibbon’s powerful tales of the African veldt, will welcome the announcement of his first novel, in which African and English life are contrasted vividly in a story of great power. $1 50.
The Landlubbers
By Gertrude Kin jr. The story of a shipwreck in midocean and of two castaways—an Illinois girl and a Yale man—who find themselves through much toil and many crises. Miss King has written a most unusual and entertaining romance. Illustrations in color. $1.50.
The Wild Geese
By Stanley J. Weyman. In the beautiful Flavia and. the gallant Colonel Sullivan we have two of the most lifelike and appealing figures in Mr. Weyman’s brave gallery cf hercines and heroes. A book for every lover of dashing fiction. $1.50.
Doubleday, Page and Co., 133 East 16th St., New York
10
[pgbrk] McClure’s—The Marketplace of the World
A Happy Marriage
Depends largely on a knowledge of the whole truth about self and sex and their relation to life and health. This knowledge does not come intelligently of itself, nor correctly from ordinary everyday sources.
SEXOLOGY
(Illustrated)
by William H. Walling, A.M., M.D., imparts in a clear, wholesome way, in one volume:
Knowledge a Young Man Should Have.
Knowledge a Young Husband Should Have.
Knowledge a Father Should Have.
Knowledge a Father Should Impart to His Son. Medical Knowledge a Husband Should Have. Knowledge a Young Woman Should Have.
Knowledge a Young Wife Should Have.
Knowledge a Mother Should Have.
Knowledge a Mother Should Impart to Her Daughter. Medical Knowledge a Wife Should Have.
Rich Cloth Binding:, Full Gold Stamp, Illustrated, $2.00 Write for “Other People’s Opinions” and Table of Contents
PURITAN PUB. CO., Dept. 176, PHILA., PA.
S3.000™TO.000;»
^-\ IN THE REAL ESTATE BUSINESS
We teach you by mail every branch of the Real Estate, General Brokerage and Insurance Business and appoint you
SPECIAL REPRESENTATIVE
of the oldest and largest co-operative real estate and brokerage company in America. Representatives are making $3,000 to $10,000 a year without any investment of capital. Excellent opportunities open to YOU. By our system you can begin making money in a few weeks without interfering with your present occupation*. Our co-operative department will give you more choicej salable property to handle than any other institution in the world. A Thorough Commercial Law Course FREE To Each Representative. Write for 62-page book, free.
THE CROSS COMPANY, 2854 Reaper Block, Chicago
Salesmen Wanted
Traveling Salesmen earn big salaries. Over 600,000 employed in the United States, and Canada. The demand for good Salesmen exceeds the supply. We will teach you to be one by mail and assist you to secure a good position through our FREE EMPLOYMENT BUREAU. We receive calls for thousands of Salesmen and have assisted thousands of men to secure good positions or better salaries. A great many of our graduates who formerly earned $25 to $75 a month, have since earned from $100 to $500 a month and expenses. Hundreds of good openings for the fall rush. If you want to secure a good position or increase your earnings our free book" A Knight of the G-rip” will show you how. Write or call for it today. Address nearest office.
Dept. 125. National Salesmen’s Training Association, Chicago, New York, Kansas City, Minneapolis, San Francisco
WRITERS ARTISTS
We sell Stories, Jokes, Poems, Illustrations, Designs and all Publishable Material—on Commission.
We know who pays best prices and can save you time and money in the disposal of your productions.
CASH RETURNS, explaining our system, sent on request. Mention your line when writing.
THE BURELL SYNDICATE, 768 Brunswick Bldg., N.Y.
PATENTS
K Fi
SECURED OR FEE RETURNED
Free opinion as to patentability. Guide Book, List of Inventions Wanted, and 100 Mechanical Movements free 1 o any address. Patents secured w us advertised free in World’s Progress. Sample copy free, i lCTOIt J. EVANS and CO., 615 F Street, Washington, D. C.
Guy-flaupassant
For the first time ever presented American readers the ONLY COMPLETE Edition, absolutely unexpurgated, in English of this great French writer, translated from the Original Manuscripts by linguists of literary distinction. Wonderful Critical Preface by Paul Bourget, of the French Academy.
Tales of Realism—Rare Oriental and Parisian Studies
De Maupassant wrote with the conviction that In life there could be no phase so noble or so mean, so honorable or so contemptible, so lofty or so low as to be unworthy of chronicling—no groove of human virtue or fault, success or failure, wisdom or folly that did not possess Its own peculiar psychological aspect and therefore demanded analysis.
Robust in Imagination and fired with natural passion, his psychological curiosity kept him true to human nature, while at the same time his mentai eye when fixed upon the most ordinary phases of human conduct, could see some new motive or aspect of things hitherto unnoticed by the careless crowd.
His dramatic instinct was supremely powerful. He seems to select unerringly the one thing In which the soul of the scene Is prisoned, and, making that his keynote, gives a picture In words which haunts the memory like a strain of music.
These marvelous quaint, delicious stories should be a part of every library. Here are given tales of travel and adventure, of mystery and dread, of strange medical experiences, of love and passion, of comedy, and pathos that hovers upon the borders of comedy, and of tragedy.
More Realistic Than Balzac. More Entertaining Than The Arabian Nights
“Maupassant was the painter of humanity in words. Without hatred, without love, without anger, without pity, merciless as fire, immutable as fate, he holds a mirror up to life without attempting judgment.” Anatole France,
Member of the French Academy.
Seventeen Beautiful Volumes of Delightful Reading
consisting of over 5,500 pages, printed from a new cast of French
Elzevir type—elegant and clear—on pure white antique egg-shell finished paper, made especially for this edition. Pages have deckle edges and liberal margins. There are thirty Illustrations from original drawings. The books are exquisitely bound In Blue Vellum DeLuxe Cloth, with distinctive brown and gold title label, silk headbands and gold tops.
We reserve the right to withdraw this offer or raise the price without notice.
AI TD T ADA NTPP • Only one complete edition has ever been
UUIy UUARA11 I EC . published in English, and the prices have been beyond the reach of but a few. After many months of ceaseless endeavor, we succeeded In securing the right to publish f Thp a limited number of sets, and offer them, for introductory pur- f y, poses only, at the remarkably low price of $24.00 a set, on f nerner small monthly installments. A strictly subscription set— Company
$51 value. Thus it is within the means of all. We have also Akron, Ohio
arranged to send these beautiful books, all express f piatc*. c«n,l charges prepaid, and allow you the privilege of charges
ten days examination. If they are not as rep- Dre'id for J
relented, or unsatisfactory, return them at f a_P
our expense. CAN ANY OFFER BE * wninat.on.the com-MORE FAIR ?
COUPON SAVES 50%. You run no risk—
MAIL IT NOW.
The Werner Company
plete works of Gay de Mnnpassnnt, in Seventeen (17) Volumes, bound fn Blue Vellum De Luxe Cloth. If satisfactory, I will remit you $2.00 at once and $2.00 per month for eleven (11) months. If not satisfactory, I will advise you within ten days. 15
Signature— "Address-
AKRON, O.A
McClure's 7-09
11
[pgbrk] McClure’s—The Marketplace of the World
9hc clure ’ s
SCHOOL t DEPARTMENT
C
nfwwww
BELMONT. CALIFORNIA.
Belmont School
For Boys. 25 miles south of San Francisco, believes that it reasonably
well meets the moral, physical and intellectual requirements of careful
parents. Write for specific information.
W. T. REID, A.M. (Harvard), Head Master.
W. T. REID, JR., A.M. (Harvard), Asst. Head Master.
PASADENA. CALIFORNIA, Dept. D.
T7 i • l • i o i l For Girls. Outdoor Study. In the
rLngllSh Classical ochool Most Delightful Climate. All Winter. 20th Year. Preparatory and Finishing: Courses. Certificates admit to Eastern Colleges. Art, Music, Gymnasium, Tennis, Riding:-
ANNA B. ORTON, Principal.
TORONTO. CANADA.
O T\/r , ii A non-denominational girls’school.Spa-
^ t. iVl argaret S College Cious buildings. Large lawns. Swimming’pool. Prepares for universities. Advantages for Music and Modern Languages. Mrs.George Dickson,Director;Miss J.E.Macdonald,B.A..Principal; George Dickson, M.A., President (Late Principal Upper Canada College).
WALLINGFORD, CONNECTICUT.
, CL 1 A New England Preparatory School,
1 llC Cnoate ocnool with a Lower School for young boys. A catalogue will be sent upon application, with addresses of those who know intimately the School’s work and character.
GEORGE C. ST. JOHN, Headmaster.
CORNWALL, LITCHFIELD COUNTY, CONNECTICUT.
Rumsey Hall
California, Los Angeles.
In the Land of Sunshine
Harvard School
FOR BOYS. (Military)
Boarding and day pupils
Fits for college and business Fine Buildings. Fourteen Masters. Chemical and Physical Laboratories. Machine Shops for Manual Training. Ten-acre Campus. Cement Tennis Courts Quarter-mile Track and 220 yard Straight-away. Two Gymnasiums. Gallery Track. Hot and Cold Shower Baths. Indoor Rifle Range.
(Send for illustrated catalogue) Prin., Grenville C. Emery, Litt.D., Late Master in the Boston Latin School.
A school in the country for young boys.
Address
HEAD MASTER.
NORWALK. CONNECTICUT.
A preparatory school for manly
Overlook School for Boys boys. Careful preparation for colleges and technical schools. Equipment strictly modern. All legitimate athletics encouraged. Overlook Camp opens June 28th. F'or circular, address
MAJOR GEORGE WILSON.
RIDGEWOLD, REDDING RIDGE, CONN., Box C.
Ti j Q v iOna well stocked farm of 350 acres.
1 IlC oanrora ocnool Rich out-of-door experiences,not merely athletics. Individual attention under experienced teachers. Thorough preparation for all colleges. A summer session for candidates for September examination. D. S. SANFORD, A. M., Headmaster.
DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA, WASHINGTON.
Reli-nurt Home and Day School (or Girls and Younz
DclLOUlL seminary Ladies. Unexcelled location. College, Preparatory, and Elective Courses. Exceptional advantages in Music, Art, Expression and Languages. Social and educational advantages of the Capital. Illus. catalogue. Address MRS. M. B. SOMERVELL,
MISS IDA LEE DUNCAN, Prin’s.
CHESHIRE SCHOOL
Situated in the beautiful hill country of central Connecticut. College preparatory and general courses, combined with well-directed physical training. Extensive grounds, fine buildings: first-class in every particular. Acquaint j'ourself with the advantages Cheshire offers before deciding upon a boarding school for your boy. Send for illustrated description and catalogue.
Rev. John D. Skilton, M. A., Headmaster, Cheshire, Conn.
FOR
BOYS
Founded A.D. 1794
TRUSTEES
*Jos. W. Harriman, President George T. Wilson *Eri D. Woodbury ~ ~
#J. Pierpont Morgan *C. La Rue Munson Nicholas Murray Butler The Rev. Flavel S. Luther *The Rt. Rev. Edwin S. Lines ^William C. Demorest
*The Rev. John Williams ^Herbert D. Lloyd, Treasurer S. Vilas Beckwith *The Rev. J. Frederick Sexton ♦William H. Burtenshaw #John A. Ordway J. D. Walter
J. Borden Harriman *Alumni. *Edw'ard Dodge, Secretary
12
[pgbrk] McClure’s—The Marketplace of the World
The Army and Navy
Preparatory School
WASHINGTON, D. C., Mintwood Place and 19th Street.
Bristol School
A school for girls offering Home and College Preparatory Courses. The French Department occupies a separate residence on the same grounds, where French is exclusively the language of the house. No other school in this country gives equal advantages in this language. Music Professors from the Washington College of Music. Social and educational advantages of the Naiional Capital. Weekly sight-seeing parties. Healthful recreation. Attractive home. Address
WASHINGTON. DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA,1906 Florida Ave., N.W,
Gunston Hall
A beautiful Colonial Home School for Young Ladies. Illustrated catalogue. MR. and MRS. BEVERLEY R. MASON, Principals.
MISS E. M. CLARK, LL.A., Associate Principal.
WASHINGTON, D. C., Lafayette Sq.
Hamilton School
Opposite the White House. For Girls and Young Ladies. Write for Catalogue.
MRS. PHOEBE HAMILTON SEABROOK, Principal.
WASHINGTON, D. C., 1653 Connecticut Ave.
Laise-Phillips School for Girls
College Preparatory, Academic, and Special Courses. Two years advanced course for high school Graduates. Art, Music, Native French and German teachers. MRS. J. SYLVESTER PHILLIPS, Principal.
WASHINGTON, D. C.
M-n j j • i ci 1 F°r Girls. Certificate privilege to 1SS Madeira S uChOOl Vassar, Smith and Wellesley. Full academic course for pupils who do not go to college. Two years advanced course for High School graduates. Music and art. Gymnasium and Athletics. Address MISS LUCY MADEIRA, 1324, 1326, 1328 Nineteenth St.
(just below Dupont Circle)
^ 4101 Connecticut Ave., Washington, D. C. ^
A select boarding: school for young- men and boys. Two departments—Academic and Special.
Academic Department—Thorough preparation for colleges, scientific schools, and business; also for the Government Academies. Certificates accepted at all colleges.
Special Department—Preparation of candidates for commissions in the _ various branches of Military and Naval service. Special class-rooms and instructors.
Fine athletic field, baseball, football, track teams.
For catalogue of either department, address
E. SWAVELY, Principal.
MISS ALICE A. BRISTOL, Principal.
WASHINGTON, D. C., Drawer 841.
Chevy Chase College and Seminary^ y°un\ uS
Campus of 11 acres. Music, Art, Elocution and Domestic Science. Golf and other out-door sports. Healthful location; artesian water. Terms reasonable. MR. and MRS. S. N. BARKER, Prins.
A Home1
Washington, D. C.
Catalogue and portfolio of views on request.
DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA, WASHINGTON.
Martha Washington Seminary AmacUve^choorTife
combined with advantages of National Capital. Two years’ course for high school graduates. General and Special Courses. Music, Art and Domestic Science. $500 a year, EDWARD W. THOMPSON, Principal.
FOR GIRLS
Mt. St. Alban, Washington. D. C.
Within the Cathedral Grounds of 40 acres. Fireproof building enlarged on account of increased pupilage, from 60 to 80 boarding pupils. Single and double rooms. Certificate admits to College. Special Courses. Music and Art.
THE BISHOP OF WASHINGTON,
President Board of Trustees.
MRS. BARBOUR WALKER, M. A., Principal.
National Park Seminary
For Yoimg Women. Washington, D. C. (Suburbs)
The story of the school; of its phenomenal growth; its remarkable equipment of 18 buildings, grouped in college fashion, forming a miniature village; its training in homemaking; its development of special talents; its pleasures, cight-seeing, and study of the capital—can be told fully only in our catalogue. Address BOX 152 , FOREST GLEN, MD.
13
[pgbrk] McClure’s—The Marketplace of the World
The National Cathedral School for Boys
The Lane-Johnston Building MOUNT ST. ALBAN, WASHINGTON, D. C.
' I 'HIS institution exemplifies, in the highest A sense, its title “The American School for American Boys ” It offers very thorough instruction, preparing for all Colleges and Universities. Its faculty is composed of trained specialists— college graduates of the highest standing. The main building is new and commodious—the most modern of its kind in America. Physical Culture is encouraged under an expert Director; Campus of 40 acres and large Gymnasium provide for all outdoor and indoor sports.
Daily religious services under direction of Bishop of Washington. Free instruction in choir music for boys of vocal abilility.
Fall session opens October 7th, 1909. For Catalogue, address Bishop of Washington President Board of Trustees, Box K
DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA. WASHINGTON. 3809 Wisconsin Are. rT~'i_ ttt * o i 1 For Boys. Located in the country,
1 ilC W asnington ocnool but within easy access of the wonderful educational opportunities of the National Capital. Unusually strong faculty, all specialists. One teacher for every five pupils. Boys of any age received. Extensive athletic grounds. Year-Book on request.
WASHINGTON, D. C., 2103-9 S Street.
Washington Seminary
An Earnest School for Earnest Girls. Planned for those who es the best advantages. A beautiful and cultured home, refined associa es, thoroughly good instruction and the upbuilding of Christian character. Academic and Special Courses. Certificate admits to Smith, Wellesley, Vassar, Mt. Holyoke and Chicago University. Culture class ior Post Graduates. Gymnasium. Rates $600 to $800.
MR. and MRS. G. T. SMALLWOOD. Principals.
ROME, GA., Box 1010.
Shorter College
Founded and endowed by Alfred Shorter, 1877. For Ladies—A college of unsurpassed excellence. , All usual departments. Delightful home. Superb location. Ideal climate. Famed for health. Address THOMAS J. SIMMONS, A.M., LL.D., President.
BUNKER HILL, ILLINOIS, Box J.
Bunker Hill M ilitary Academy heLkKwhliLmrcom-
plete, thorough, inspiring; “the best features of the best schools,” East and West; business and all higher preparatory courses; highest references; booklet free; write fully. SAMUEL L. STIVER, Ph.D., Superintendent.
EVANSTON, ILLINOIS. Box 850.
-T-i » , Of Northwestern University. A strong
Evanston Academy co-educational preparatory school having the unusual advantages afforded by close proximity to a prominent University. Thorough work; capable instructors; unusually high moral tone. Academic, Classical, Commercial Courses; Music, Oratory, Manual Training and Mechanical Drawing. Twelve miles from Chicago. Splendid equipment; fine athletic grounds. For Bulletins and Prospectus, address ARTHUR H. WILDE, Principal.
LAKE FOREST, ILL., Box 506.
T7 n ii For Young Women. Fortieth Year. College preparatory
r erry Jria.ll and Junior College. Certificate admits to Smith, Vassar, Wellesley, etc. Art, music, domestic science, physical training. Beautiful location, home care. For catalogue and book of views, address
MISS FRANCES L. HUGHES.
WINNETKA. ILLINOIS. Box 33.
. CL 1 For anc* Young Women. Ideally located, LjirtOn ocnool Chicago suburban school. College preparatory, general and finishing courses. Music. Art, Elocution, Domestic Science. Physical Training. Certificate admits to Smith, Vassar, Wellesley. Catalogue on request. FRANCIS KING COOKE, Principal.
COEEEGE
CONSERVATORY
GAINESVILLE, GA.
THREE HUNDRED BOARDERS—representing twenty-eight states. All standard courses. Unusual advantages in music, art and oratory. 35 teachers with American and European training. Healthful climate in Piedmont region of the South, near Atlanta.
22 buildings including chapter houses for sororities. Campus recently enlarged to 75 acres. Gymnasium and athletic field. Expenses, $300 to $500. Summer School June 24. Chautauqua July 4th to July 31st.
Address Post Office Box 102 for Catalogue.
American Conservatory
Kimball Hall
251 Wabash Ave., Chicago, 111.
The Leading School of Music and Dramatic Art. Seventy eminent instructors. Unsurpassed Teachers’ Training Department. Public School Music. School of Acting, Hart Conway, Director. Diplomas and Teachers’ Certificates^ Many free advantages. Thirty free scholarships awarded to talented pupils of limited means. Twenty-fourth season begins September 9, 1909. Catalog mailed free on application. JOHN J. HATTSTAEDT, President.
College of Physicians and Surgeons, Chicago
The College of Physicians and Surgeons—College of Medicine of the University of Illinois—will open its regular session October 1st, 1909. Laboratory equipment complete—Clinical facilities unsurpassed. Individual and bedside instruction a special feature. Students allowed to specialize in elective subjects.
Send for Catalogue No. 25 to FRANK B. EARLE, M.D., Secretary, Congress and Honore Sts., Chicago. 111.
14
[pgbrk] McClure’s—The Marketplace of the World
Learn Photogr aphy, Photo-Engraving or 3-Color Work
Engravers and 3-Color Operators Earn $20 to $5
.$50
Per Week. Only college in the world where these paying professions are taught successfully. Established 16 years. Endorsed by International Association of Photo-Engravers, and Photographers’ Association of Illinois. Terms easy ; living inexpensive. Graduates placed in good positions. Write for catalogue, and specify course in which you are interested.
Illinois College of Photography or \ 945 Wabash Ave. Bissell College of Photo-Engraving 1 Effingham, III.
L. H. BISSELL, Pres. No Saloons in Effingham.
EVANSTON, ILL.
Northwestern University School of Oratory
Special advantages. We occupy our own building. We offer two private lessons a week. We offer fourteen class lessons a week. Scholarships yielding SI50 yearly, furnished to needy and meritorious students. Ten of the ablest instructors in America giving their entire time to the school. For catalogue, address
________________ R. L. CUMNOCK. L-H-D-. Director.
MT. CARROLL, ILL., Box 608.
The Frances Shimer Academy
And Junior College. A Home School for Girls and Young Women. Preparatory and General Courses. College Department. Two years’ course; diploma. Music, Art, Domestic Science. Stenography, Elocution. Rate $360. Certificate privilege. Golf, tennis, coasting. Beautiful grounds. 56th year opens Sept. 8th. No building more than six years old. New $20,000 college dormitory. Three hours from Chicago. Chicago Office, Fine Arts Bldg., August.
REV. WILLIAM P. McKEE. Dean.
Rockford College for Women
Rockford College is the only woman’s college of the Middle West accorded the first rank in scholarship by the Commission of Education. College courses leading to the degrees of A.B. and B S. Trains also for a vocation Home Economics, Secretarial, Library. Music, Applied Design Departments. An average of one instructor to every eight students. Centrally located for Middle West students. Catalogue.
JULIA H. GULLIVER, Ph.D., President, Box H, Rockford, Illinois
CHICAGO, ILLINOIS, 3138 Michigan Boulevard.
The Misses Spaids School I^ingc^?J'ZTsZ
Science, Music, Art. Certificate admits without examination to the leading colleges. Splendid new home. Catalogue upon request. The_MISSES SPAIDS, Principals.
Kentucky Military Institute
The School with a Winter Home in Florida
This school has the distinction of having two homes, one at Lyndon (near Louisville), Ky.; the other on the Indian River, Eau Gallie, Florida. The plan of spending the winter months in Florida has been in successful operation for 4 years, resulting in marked benefits, mentally, morally, physically and socially, to the cadets. Both Preparatory and Collegiate Courses are offered. Rates, including Southern trip, $400. Send for Catalogue and Florida booklet.
COL. C. W. FOWLER, Supt. Box 80, Lyndon, Ky.
4 .... ------------
GRiECO-ROMAN RACE
rI1VF>Military Academy
Jw IrfW (On Lake Maxinkuckee) Culver, Indiana
A School of Interest to Every American Boy
For the active, wide-awake boy there is no school like Culver. The military life makes him strong and manly, and the scholastic work is of the highest order. The course offers thorough preparation for either college or business life. Culver has been officially designated by the War Department as one of the six distinguished military schools in the country. The catalogue, which is to be had on request, pictures many scenes of the interesting life here. Address The Superintendent’s Office, Culver, Ind.
15
[pgbrk] McClure’s—The Marketplace of the World
VALPARAISO UNIVERSITY
(ACCREDITED!
VALPARAISO, INDIANA
One of the Largest Institutions of Learning in the United States.
Will open its Thirty-Seventh Year, September 21, 1909.
Old College Building
The growth of the Institution has been without a parallel. It was established in 1873 with three Departments, 4 Instructors and the annual enrollment was 210 different students. Now there are
25 Departments, 176 Instructors
5367 Different Students
The reason for this growth is in the fact that the Institution is constantly increasing its facilities, strengthening its courses of study and offering additional advantages without making the expense to the student any greater. It is well-equipped with buildings, library, laboratories, and apparatus for giving thorough instruction in the following departments:
Preparatory, Teachers*, Kindergarten, Primary, Pedagogy, Manual Training, Scientific, Biology, Civil Engineering, Classical, Higher English, Cerman, French, Spanish, Italian, Elocution and Oratory,^ Music, Fine Art, Law, Pharmacy, Medical, Dental, Commercial, Penmanship, Phonography and Typewriting, Review.
The aim of the Institution is to give to all, whether rich or poor, equal advantages for securing a thorough, practical education. In order to carry out this idea the Institution has always provided,
THE HIGHEST GRADE OF INSTRUCTION. IT HAS SUPPLIED ITSELF WITH THE BEST EQUIPMENTS. IT HAS MADE THE EXPENSES THE LOWEST.
“THE COST OF LIVING.”
Most satisfactory accommodations for board and room may be had at from $1.70 to $2.25 per week. Tuition $15 per quarter of twelve weeks.
DEPARTMENT OF DENTISTRY,
Valparaiso University.
On account of the clinical advantages this department is located in Chicago, just one block from the medical department of the school. The building 80x120 ft., five stories high, is entirely occupied by the Dental School.
The School has been established for a quarter of a century under the well-known name of
“ Chicago College of Dental Surgery.”
Dr. Truman W. Brophy, M.D., D.D. S., LL. D., has been the Dean of the college from the beginning, and continues to act in the same capacity. His name is favorably known in dental circles in every city in the country as well as in foreign countries.
Students enter the Dental Department at the beginning of the year only.
All other departments at any time.
DEPARTMENT OF MEDICINE,
Valparaiso University.
The cost of study in this is the same as that of the best medical schools. Valparaiso University owns its college and hospital buildings in both Valparaiso and Chicago. The Chicago buildings are just across the street from Cook County Hospital, in one of the Greatest Medical Centers in the World.
Two years of the work may be done at Valparaiso, thus greatly reducing the expenses, or the entire four years may be done in Chicago.
Auditorium. Seating Capacity 204-1
Catalog Mailed Free. Address
H. B. BROWN, President, or 0. P. KINSEY, Vice President, n,d£^80’
CALENDAR FOR '90^9,0-^*™*^; ^loPen^mber 2!. yl 909; Second Term, December ,4, .909;
16
[pgbrk] McClure’s—The Marketplace of the World
TERRE HAUTE, INDIANA.
Rose Polytechnic Institute
A College of Engineering. Courses in Mechanical, Electrical, Civil and Chemical Engineering and Architecture. Extensive Shops, well equipped Laboratories in all departments. Expenses low. Twenty-sixth year. For Catalogue containing full information and professional register of alumni, address
C. L. MEES, President. BALTIMORE. MD-, 122 and 124 W. Franklin Street.
Edgeworth Boarding and Day School
For Girls. The 47th year.
MRS. H. P LEFEBVREK
MISS E. D HUNTLEY J
Principals.
HAGERSTOWN. MARYLAND.
T7- iy/w it For Women. Modern buildings, campus of
J^.CC IViar College ten acres, in the beautiful Cumberland Valley. Preparatory, Collegiate and Special Courses, with unusual advantages in Art and Music. $300 a year. For illustrated catalogue, address
S. M. NEWMAN, D.D., President.
NF^'HWI ■ *'Tq°5 \ v
'Jtr ' t ik j. —^ j \,
e ^ @ ^ v "-'h
- -Nk - ■
Baltimore’s beautiful suburbs. Washington advantages. Preparatory and College. Two years’ course for high school graduates. Lit. B. and A. B. degrees. Elocution. Art. School of Music with exceptional advantages. Healthful climate. Extensive campus. Fine, up-to-date buildings. All modern improvements. Outdoor sports and gymnasium. Non-sectarian. $400 to $550. Catalogue and Book of Views. Rev. Chas.Weslev Gallagher, D.D..Pres., Box N, Lutherville. Mo.
BALTIMORE, MARYLAND, Charles Street Avenue. xt -pv f 1\/T 1 College for Women and Preparatory
rNOtre i_J3.mC or IVlCl. School for Girls. Regular and Elective
Courses. Extensive Grounds. Location Unsurpassed. Suburbs of Baltimore. Spacious Buildings, completely equipped. Conducted by School Sisters of Notre Dame.
FREDERICK, MARYLAND.
The Woman’s College
Offers a well-balanced course, including electives, leading to the B.A. degree. Strong Preparatory Department. Diplomas also granted in Music, Art and Elocution. Practical courses in Domestic Science and Physical Culture. In seeking individual development of students,
emphasis is placed upon personal influence of faculty. Terms $300.
JOSEPH H. APPLE, A.M., President.
View across the Campus
The Tome School for Boys
An Endowed Preparatory School Its Endowment makes possible:
A faculty of university men who are specialists in their departments. School buildings and grounds representing an investment of $1,500,000.00.
Swimming Pool, Gymnasium,
Athletic Fields, Golf Links, Quarter Mile Track, Batting Cage, Tennis Courts.
Enrollment limited to boys of high character. Tuition, $700; no extras. A completely equipped Lower School for little boys.
Elaborately illustrated Book on Reguest•
=1 DR. THOMAS S. BAKER, Director, Port Deposit, Md.
SHEFFIELD, MASSACHUSETTS.
Berkshire School for Boys
A country school which combines, with the best instruction, ideal conditions for out-door life among the Berkshire Hills. SEAVER B. BUCK, Head-master. Telephone 175 Great Barrington.
BOSTON. MASSACHUSETTS, 458 Boylston Street.
tt 11 C u 1 Established 1828. Prepares boys Uhauncy H.aJI ochool exclusively for MASSACHU-
SETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY and other scientific schools. Every teacher a specialist.
__________________________________HAGAR and KURT, Principals.
FRANKLIN, MASSACHUSETTS.
Dean Academy
Young men and young women find here a home-like atmosphere, thorough and efficient training in every department of a broad culture, a loyal and helpful school spirit. Liberal endowment permits liberal terms, $300 per year.
For catalogue and information, address ________________________________ARTHUR W. PEIRCE, Litt. P., Principal.
Harvard University Graduate School of Business Administration
Banking and Finance Insurance Industrial Organization Commercial Law
Accounting and Auditing Economic Resources Transportation Public Service
Graduates of approved colleges will be admitted as candidates for the degree of Master in P,usiness Administration. Two years’course. Mature students not graduates of colleges, if qualified by business experience or otherwise, will be admitted for special studies.
With the exception of three prescribed eourses-Economic Resources,Commercial Law and Accounting*;the course of study is selected with a view to special training in a particular field of business. The school not only gives the student the theory of business administration, but emphasizes practical work, and offers an opportunity for office and shop experience during the summer in the various lines of business which are taken up during the school year. Training is specialized to prepare for the various lines of commerce and manufacturing. Address the DEAN, 22 University Hall, Cambridge, Mass.
BRADFORD ACADEMY
FOE YOUNG WOMEN. Bradford, Mass.
One hundred and sixth year.
Thirty miles from Boston, in the beautiful Merrimac Valley Extensive grounds and modern equipment. Certificate admits to leading colleges. General course of five years and two years’ course fo’r High School graduates. For Catalogue, address the Principal
Miss LAURA A. KNOTT, A. ---
WAf
16a
[pgbrk] McClure’s—The Marketplace of the World
R
ACADEMY
All advantages of a large school. Master teachers, comprehensive equipment. Great record for college preparation. Complete laboratory building. Manual training. Isolated infirmary. “TheMegar-on,” a noble recreation hall. Perfect swimming pool. Gymnasium, physical training. Athletic field, eleven acres. Field House with baths and lockers. Quarter mile track; football and baseball fields; tenniscourts. 76th year begins Sept. 14th, 1909. Illustrated catalogue.
I). W. ABERCROMBIE, LL.l)., Principal, Worcester, Mass.
Detroit University School
Preparatory and Manual Training School for Boys
New buildings, unexcelled dormitory, shops, laboratories, gymnasium, swimming pool, athletic field. Exceptional faculty. College certificates accepted. In ten years graduates have entered 24 colleges. Calendar upon application. Those addressing Secretary, 18 Elmwood Ave., Detroit, Mich., will receive also an illustrated book.
Lasell Seminary
For Young Women
Aabarndale, Mass. Ten Miles from Boston.
A high grade school for young women, offering regular college preparatory and special courses, including music, art and eJocut.ion.
Home making in all its phases is thoroughly taught at Lasell. The principles of hygiene and sanitation, the science of foods, marketing, cooking, the art of entertaining, house furnishing and management, sewing, dress-making and millinery are studied in a practical way under the supervision of competent teachers.
Tennis, boating, swimming, riding and other sports are encouraged. Beautiful suburban location.
A resident nurse carefully looks after the health of the pupils.
For illustrated catalogue, address,
Lasell Seminary, Aubumdale, Mass.
——
Concord School
for Boys Concord, Mass.
In Old Concord, twenty miles from Boston. Modern buildings; up-to-date equipment; perfect sanitation. Gymnasium, tennis courts, athletic fields. Experienced teachers : individual instruction. Discipline that develops manliness and self-control. Preparation for college, scientific school, or business. Twentieth year begins September 22,1909. Catalog on application.
BILLERICA, MASSACHUSETTS (20 miles from Boston).
The Mitchell Military Boys’ School
A thoroughly modern military home school. Boys admitted 8 to 16 inclusive. Honorable dismissal from last school required. Special matron for younger boys. Number limited. Catalogue upon request.
A. H. MITCHELL. Head Master.
BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS, 283 Dartmouth Street.
Tj j -pi 1 Q L 1 A Department of Harvard University,
narvara I_yentai ocnooi unusual facilities for practical work. Three years’ course leading to degree. Doctor Dental Medicine. New Building. Large clinic. Certificates from recognized preparatory schools accepted. Write for catalog. EUGENE H. SMITH, D.M.D., Dean.
WEST BRIDGEWATER. MASSACHUSETTS.
Howard Seminary FoLGirl,%a!’? Y°une Ladjcs- H«altll(ul
’ and beautiful location. 25 miles from Boston. Academic. College Preparatory and Special Courses. Two years’ course for High School graduates. Domestic Science. Art and Music Studios.
MISS SARAH E. LAUGHTON, A. M., Principal.
Characterized by Strength of Teachers.
The many considerations of a boy’s life at school form the text of a pamphlet that has been written about this school. Though it may not influence a selection in favor of this school, it will be read with interest by all who are impressed with the equipment and methods that are essential for a thoroughly modern preparatory school.
This pamphlet, which has been prepared with care and illustrated with numerous photographic reproductions, describes both by word and picture many details of the school life as well as the advantages, natural beauty and historic interest of the school’s surroundings. Sent without charge on request by postal card or otherwise. Please address
Dr. A. A. WHITE, Rock Ridge Hall, Wellesley Hills, Mass.
16b
[pgbrk] McClure’s—The Marketplace of the World
WOLLASTON, QUINCY, MASS.
Q * T\/r O L l For Girls. Fine estate of eleven
llincy Mansion bchool acres, 6 miles from Boston. Ample grounds. Outdoor sports. Regular and graduate courses. Advantages in Music, Art, Languages. College preparation and certificate.
MRS. HORACE M. WILLARD, Prin.
HOUGHTON, MICHIGAN
Michigan College of Mines F* w* McNair* President.
Located in Lake Superior
district. Mines and Mills accessible for College work, and Record of Graduates apply to President or Secretary.
For Year Book
FAYETTE, MO.
C'* . If'' 11 rounaea m 185/. run college
central college degrees. Modern buildings and extensive campus. $400,000 being invested in equipment and endowment. Expenses low and many men pay half by work. Valuable prizes and scholarships offered. Write for information. WM. A. WEBB, President.
EXETER, NEW HAMPSHIRE.
The Phillips Exeter Academy
129th year opens Sept. 15th, 1909. For catalogue and views, address
HARLAN P. AMEN, Principal.
WEST LEBANON, NEW HAMPSHIRE. Box 216.
RocklandMilitaryAcadem.^^^"^
Education is costly; ignorance more so. This school develops manliness, builds character, trains mind and bo'dy at the formative time of a boy’s life. Military system, judicious athletics, preparation for College. West Point, Annapolis or business. 52nd year. Summer Camp. Over $10,000.00 spent in improvements inl906. Our five books free. ELMER E. FRENCH.
LEXINGTON, MO.
CVrifral CoIWp for Wnmpn A short run.out of Kansas cih-V^cilirdJ. college ior VV omen Modern buildings on a campus
of fotty acres. High grade woman’s college. Courses leading to A.B. and A.M. degrees. Music, Art, Expression. A very strong faculty. Moderate Charges. Write for Catalogue. GEORGE MILES GIBSON, A.M., Pres.
NEVADA, MO.
C‘ p ii For Women. Twenty-fifth year. Silver Jubilee Oct. OttCV v^OliCgC 20th. Modern Equipment. Splendid Faculty. Celebrated Conservatory—Europe methods. Schools of Art, Expression and Domestic Science. Select patronage. Ideal Christian home. Out-door sports. Reasonable rates. Address MRS.V. A. C. STOCKARD, Founder and Pres.
MEXICO, MO., 1203 COLLEGE PLACE
Hardin College and Conservatory 36thYye^^chaptered by the State. An endowment permits of many educational advantages. Courses in Art, Elocution, Cooking and Business. German-American Conservatory. German methods. Competent teachers# For catalogue address
JOHN W. MILLION, A.M., President.
FAYETTE, MISSOURI.
tt j ii for Young Women. Preparatory and
-Howard-Jrayne \_#Ollege Full College Courses leading to A.B. Also very strong courses in Music, Art and Oratory. Modern buildings and equipment and large campus. Necessary expenses $225 a year. Illustrated catalogue on request. HENRY E. STOUT, President.
LIBERTY, MISSOURI.
t • i t j* >/"^ii Offers a thorough and comprehen-
Hlberty .L/adlCS \-#OllCgC sive course, modeled after those of leading colleges, for the higher education of women. Healthful location, 14 miles from Kansas City. American Mozart Conservatory. Assures a musical education of the highest order. For catalogue, address
C. W. WILLIAMS, President.
ST. CHARLES, MISSOURI, Box 277.
t . 1 i /~i it # txt Established 1831.
Lindenwood College tor Women offers college
Courses, Music and Art; has excellent Preparatory Department. Modern buildings throughout. Ideal climate. Only 50 minutes from St. Louis. Terms $285 to $300. REV. GEORGE FREDERIC AYRES, Ph.D.. Pres.
MEXICO, MISSOURI, Box A-2.
■»». . Hif.i. a j Educates the Whole Man!
Missouri Military Academy select, limited, thorough.
No Failures. Graduates all make good. Ideal School for nice boys. Catalogue will interest parents who desire the best for their sons. Applications not considered after the limit is reached. Now is your time. Address
COL. W. D. FONVILLE.
Blair Academy
Blairstown, New Jersey
62nd year. Prepares for any American college. New buildings; gymnasium; thorough equipment. Healthful location. Campus 80 acres. Liberal endowment justifies the unusually low rate of $350. Fall term opens Sept. 15th.
JOHN C. SHARPE, A.M., D.D., Principal, P. 0. BOX P
“ Cliar acter-buildi7ig is our first aim.”
Bordentown Military Institute
Bordentown-on-the-Delaware, N. J.
What your boy will become depends a great deal on the influences which surround him. Through the influence this school exerts we are endeavoring to develop strong, noble, manly character and give boys, thorough equipment for the work of the world.
Our catalogue gives the teachers’ view-point, and The Skirmisher,” our illustrated school paper, shows the boys’ side. Both books sent upon request.
25th year under present management. Preparation for college, scientific school, and . business. Superior instruction in music. Boys’ summer camp in Ontario woods, Canada.
Rev. T. H. Landon, A.M.. D.D.. Prin. Lieut.-Col. T. D. I.andon, Commandant!
ST. CHARLES, MISSOURI, Box 206.
St. Charles Military Academy St. Louis. Beautiful campus.
Healthfulness unexcelled. Completely equipped. High-class patronage. Accredited school. All athletics. University trained faculty. Teacher for svery 10 boys. Home life. COL. WALTER R. KOHR, President.
SUMMIT, NEW JERSEY.
^ , A J A select boys* school, under Catholic auspice^,
Uarlton Academy with laymen as teachers. Number limited. Healthful location near New York City. Thorough preparation for all colleges and scientific schools. References as to character of applicants required. Campus, 7 acres. For catalogue, address
CHARLES H. SCHULTZ, M.A., Headmaster.
Kemper Military School Missouri
A home school for boys, of unusually complete equipment. Buildings modern. Home department unsurpassed. Expensive building for physical culture, containmg fine gymnasium, drill hall, bowling alleys, gallery for target practice, etc. Beautiful grounds of 30 acres, with ball field, athletic tracks, tennis courts and lake. Full Fast year. Patronage from 19 States, Mexico and Canada. Army officer detailed to school by President. Rated in highest class by War Dept. Recognized preparatory school for Missouri State University and all leadinejncolleges. For catalogue Address, Col. T. A. JOHNSTON, Supt., 714 8d St., Boonville, Mo.
16c
[pgbrk] McClure’s—The Marketplace of the World
SUMMIT, NEW JERSEY (Near New York).
Kent Place School for Girls
MRS. SARAH WOODMAN PAUL. Principal. HAMILTON WRJGHT MAB1E. LL.D-, Presd’t Board of Directors.
DWIGHT SCHOOL
ENGLEWOOD, NEW JERSEY
Suburban to New York City. College Preparatory and Special Courses. Limited number of pupils insures individual care. Certificates accepted by Vassar, Smith, Wellesley ai.d \\ ells. Carefully planned courses for those not desiring to (liter college. Five buildings. Spacious grounds for outdoor games. Gymnasium. Tennis, riding.
Address Box 605.
'ONTCLAIR ACADEMY
MILITARY ORGANIZATION POINT COMMANDANT.
Twenty-third year under present Headmaster.
A College Preparatory School with modern equipment, including gymnasium and swimming pool.
“The Montclair Idea in Military Training” differs widely from the usual military school. This and our wonderfully successful plan of individual assistance are fully explained in a booklet entitled “Your Boy and Our School,” in which the Headmaster says some pointed things which will interest parents, no matter where their sons are educated. Mailed, together with our catalogue, upon request. JOHN 0. MacVICAR, A.M..37Walden Place, Montclair. N. J.
MflNGSLEY ■I SCHOOL
FOR BOYS. Essex Fells, N. J.
Located in the hills, a region of exceptional healthfulness, 22 miles from New York. In material equipment the school is thoroughly modern and complete. It offers preparation for all colleges and scientific schools. The student body islarge enough for strong athletic and other organizations, but small enough so that individual attention can be given to the mental, moral and physical development of every pupil. Large gymnasium, and extensive grounds for athletics and sports. Address :
J. R. CAMPBELL, M. A., Headmaster, BoxllO
FREEHOLD, NEW JERSEY.
New Jersey Military Academy
Midway New York and Philadelphia. Prepares for College, Scientific School or Business. Modern equipment, gymnasium, grounds for athletics and sports $450-$500. System is military but not reformatory. Also, under same management, but some blocks distant, the
Freehold Military School
For boys 8 to 14, where the unquestioned advantages of the Military System are adapted to the needs of young boys. Small classes and individual instruction and care, enrollment being limited to 50. $400-$450. For catalogue of either school, address MAJOR CHAS. M. DUNCAN.
NEWTON, NEW JERSEY, Box D-7.
iLj *■ A A ^ c*ass h°me preparatory school under
IN ewtoil /Academy a semi-military organization. Fifty miles from New York on D. L. A W. Special attention given younger boys. Academic, Classical and Commercial courses. High, healthful location. All sports. Gymnasium. Summer camp. Horseback riding. Rates $400.
PHILIP S. WILSON, A. M., Principal.
In choosing a school for your boy select one where the development of character is uppermost and where mere “book learning’ * is not considered real education.
Peddie Institute
FOR BOYS
is an academy of high rank in both scholarship and moral tone. It is an endowed school for 200 boys*. Its equipment is modern and the teachers are specialists. Prepares for all colleges, technical and medical schools. Strong, practical business course for boys not going to college. Music. Sixty acres campus, athletic field, gymnasium, swimming pool. Rates $375- Location nine miles from Princeton in a region unsurpassed for health. Lower school for boys 11 to 14 years. Forty-third year opens September 22d, 1909. Any boy going away to school will be interested in our little booklet, “A Days’ Work for a Peddie Boy,” sent upon request.
Principal R. W. SWETLAND, Box 7-G, Hightstown, N. J.
PRINCETON, NEW JERSEY.
Princeton Preparatory School X'J'ioSlZT'oZ
fourteen. Rapid progress possible because of limited number pupils (fifty) and freedom from rigid class organization. Ample grounds; modern buildings. Personal inspection invited. Address J. B. FINE, Headmaster, j
NEW BRUNSWICK. N. J.. Box C-3.
Rutgers Preparatory School for Boys
Prepares for any college or technical school. Close affiliation with Rutgers College. Athletics. Terms $425.00 and up. Summer Camp, Schoodic Lake, Me. Address MYRON T. SCUDDER, Headmaster.
WENONAH, GLOUCESTER CO., N. J.. Box 110.
Wenonah Military Academy
An ideal academy for well-bred boys. Ranks with the highest schools in scholarship, moral environment, character building and physical training. Prepares for leading colleges and business. Modern equipment. Moderate rates. Sleeping quarters with single rooms and special comforts. Extensive new gymnasium. Athletic Field of eight acres. Quarter-mile cinder track. University trained faculty. 10 miles from Philadelphia. No saloons or factories in the town. Apply for catalogue to
MAJOR JOHN R. JONES, Supt.
Pennington Seminary
llor Boys and Girls
Classical, Scientific, English, Advanced Literature, Commercial, Domestic Science and Manual Training Courses. Art. Elocution, Vocal and Instrumental Music, including Pipe Organ. Athletics under n competent director. Summer (’amp for Boys. Separate Home Jnnior Department for students under 14 years of age. The 72d Session opens Sept. 21st. Terms $375 to $400. Apply for catalogue and booklet of special departments.
MORGAN ItF.AO. P.P.. President, Box I\I. Pennington, N. J.
16d
[pgbrk] McClure’s—The Marketplace of the World
WEST JERSEY ACADEMY
57th Year
School for Boys. In the country, with town advantages. Thorough preparation for college or business life. Stone building. Steam heat. Electric light. Fourteen-acre campus. Gymnasium. Boating. All athletics under supervision. 38 miles from Philadelphia. GEQRGE H. ECKELS, A. M., Principal, Box 409 , Bridgeton, N. J.
ELMIRA, N. Y. Established 1855.
Elmira College for Women
Full courses (four years) leading to degrees A. B., B. S. and B. M. Superior advantages in Music and Art. Special attention given to gymnasium work and out-door sports. Home life and social pleasantries emphasized. Departments of study in charge of specially trained and experienced professors. Home, Board and Tuition, $400. For Room alone $50 extra. Catalogue sent on application.
A. CAMERON MACKENZIE, D.D., LL.D.. President.
HEATHCOTE HALL
Lockwood Collegiate School For Girls
A country school within forty minutes of Grand Central Station. Beautiful grounds. Riding, tennis, basket-ball, skating, coasting, and indoor physical training.
School year begins Thursday, September 30, 1909. THE MISSES LOCKWOOD, SCARSDALE, WESTCHESTER CO., N. Y.
lla School
The Leading Preparatory School to Cornell
A splendidly-equipped institution, designated by President Schurman of Cornell as “one of the best in the country.” Commanding situation near the campus of Cornell University, for which institution it has prepared over iooo students.
Buildings exceptionally attractive and commodious. Unique Recreation Building on Lake Cayuga, with Navy Outfit and Gym-, nasium. The classes are small, permitting individual instruction. Certificate admits to colleges and technical schools of the highest rank without entrance examination. The equipment of this school is such as to make it worthy of close investigation. Registration 1908-09 from 23 states. References required- -
C. V. PARSELL, A. M., PRINCIPAL, ITHACA, N. Y.
Ethical Culture School
Central Park West and 63rd St. New York City
Day school for boys and girls. Kindergarten, elementary. high school and college preparatory, and normal training departments. Music, art, physical training, festivals. Prepares for all colleges and professional schools. Building modern and finely equipped. Manual training shops. Gymnasium. Roof garden. Parents are invited to visit the school For catalogue and any information desired address-
FRANKLIN C. LEWIS, Superintendent*
VALHALLA, WESTCHESTER COUNTY, NEW YORK.
✓-'11 tv r t A Co-Educational Friends’
Cnappaqua Mountain Institute school. 39th > ear. Removes this season to its beautiful new buildings at Valhalla, 25 miles from N.Y. 30 acres, 500 ft. altitude. Preparatory,Commercial,Manual Training, Music. Separate residence and Home Mother for young children. $250—$275 a year. Address Box J.
How to Increase Your Salary
Are you unemployed ? or dissatisfied with your present position ? or get very low wages and see no prospect of advancement ? If so
CAN HELP YOU
A course in this most widely known business school will give you a thorough business training and qualify you to command a good salary. Bookkeeping, Shorthand, Typewriting, Penmanship, Civil Service and Academic Departments. Telegraph and Railroad Work also successfully taught. Positions obtained for all graduates of Complete Commercial Course. Write for FREE prospectus to CLEMENT C. GAINES, M.A., B.L., President
Box 637, Poughkeepsie, N. Y._____________
paratory Courses; Physical and Social Culture; Music, Art, Elocution, Domestic Science. Piano instruction by the Leschetizky Method. Beautiful location on the Hudson. Terms $400. Catalogue.
JOS. E. KING. P.P.. President, Box 109, Fort Edward, N.Y.
NEW YORK CITY, 607 Fifth Avenue.
The Gardner Home School
For Girls. Exclusive location opposite the homes of Mrs. Russell Sage and Mrs. Ogden Goelet. Thorough instruction. Much open-air life. The health, happiness and progress of pupils assured. Music a specialty.
FORT EDWARD COLLEGIATE INSTITUTE
16e
[pgbrk] McClure’s—The Marketplace of the World
RVING
SCHOOL
MANY BOYS FAIL TO PASS
For College in June
often because of the “grade” system of their schools and a consequent lack of individual care. If they expect to enter in September they will find on application that the
Groff School
228 West 72nd St., New York
with' its carefully limited number of students, offers unusual opportunities for rapid progress during its Summer Session beginning August 2d.
Few boys are stupid; they simply need individual assistance of able teaches; this the Groff School has supplied many years with unusual success.
Location for summer or winter, the best—near the Hudson and surrounded by two of New York’s best parks.
Boarding: and Bay School.—Unusual accommodations for a few more boarding: students for the summer and for the new school year. Also day students.
Free use of largest and best-equipped gymnasium to be had in New York; also swimming pool and athletic field—all conveniently near to the school. Systematic daily physical exercise under most competent director strongly urged though not compulsory.
Unusual success with college candidates during the past year. Leading colleges, Annapolis and West Point. Rates in accordance with superior advantages offered. Address the Principal.
JOSEPH C. GROFF, A. B., and of Class 1893, U. S. N. A. 228 West 72nd Street, New York City.
Long Distance Telephone, 744, Columbus, New York.
BINGHAMTON, N. Y.
The Lady Jane Grey School
For Girls. Twenty-sixth year. Mrs. JANE GREY HYDE, Miss MARY R. HYDE, Miss JANE BREWSTER HYDE, Principals.
OSSINING, N. Y.
-r-v tt 11 i C L l Preparatory School for Boys. I he Dr. Holbrook ochooi Established 1866. Situated on Briar Cliff, 500 feet above sea level. Satisfactory references as to character are necessary for enrollment. For illustrated catalog;, address
____________THE DR. HOLBROOK SCHOOL.
FLUSHING, LONG ISLAND, Box 502.
Kyle Institute
BOARDING SCHOOL FOR BOYS.
Prepares for Business and College. Gymnasium, Swimming: Pool, Baseball Field. Camp on School Grounds near Flushing Bay. Unsurpassed advantages in German. Terms, $425.00 school year; $500.00 for entire year. Summer School, $75.00
DR. PAUL KYLE. Principal.
For Boys Tarrytown-on-Hudson, N. Y.
Parents desiring to place their sons in a school where they will be thoroughly prepared lor College or Scientific School, should send for our catalogue. It describes the school’s beautiful location, 25 miles from New York, in the historic “Irving” country, and how exceptionally well fitted it is in teaching staff and general equip ment.
Athletic field, gymnasium and swimming pool Summer Camp, Bantam Lake, Litchfield Hills, Conn
I 1100 ft. altitude. Address
^ J. M. FURMAN, A. M., Head Master, Box 912 W
ITHACA, N. Y., 230 N. Cayuga St.
T 1 it* i o 1 1 Prepares for any College and for Business.
ltn3.C3. Olgn bcnool Has prepared over 1,000 students for 47 different colleges. Complete equipment, libraries, laboratories, 7-acre athletic field, etc. Secures all regents credentials. Students cqn enter any lime. Tuition $100. For catalogue, address F. D. BOYNTON, D. Pd., Supt.
POUGHKEEPSIE, N. Y.
Lyndon Hall School
prepares many girls for Vassar, but is distinctively a Home School, and offers special advantages to the large number of girls who do not go to college.
SAMUEL W. BUCK, A.M., Principal.
DOBBS FERRY ON HUDSON, N. Y.
Mackenzie School
Careful preparation of 150 boys for College and Technical school.
Dr. Albert Shaw, Chairman of Council.
JAMES C. MACKENZIE, Ph.D., Director.
MOHEGAN LAKE SCHOOL
30th Year. Mohegan, Westchester Co., N. Y.
On the shores of beautiful Mohegan Lake, 500 feet above Hudson River level, and four miles, by trolley, from Peekskill. Classical, Scientific and English Courses. Prepares for any college or technical school. Special attention to physical development in Gymnasium. Athletics and field and water sports under competent Director. References as to character of applicants required. For year book address Box 235.
A. E LINDER. A. Itl., CHAS. H. SMITH, A. M., Principals.
Verbeck MAIN LIUS SCHOOL WmP^tiAM-
MANLIUS, N. Y.
Preparation for college and for life. Engineering course. Designated by the War Detriment ps “ • u j
Institution.” 1904. 1905. 1906. 1907. 1908. y war UeParlment as Distinguished
l6f
[pgbrk] McClure’s—The Marketplace of the World
New York Military Academy
Cornwall=on=Hudson, New Yprk.
A Technical Preparatory School
Organized and splendidly equipped for the work of preparing boys for College, the great Engineering Schools and business life. The academy is conducted on a thorough military basis, has been famous for years for its firm and successful discipline and is ranked by the United States government in Class “A,” the highest grade of military schools under government supervision. Cavalry detachment under an officer in the U. S. Cavalry. Full military band. Separate department for young boys with the best equipment in the country. Located in the Hudson River Highlands, four miles from West Point, a region world-renowned for its beauty and healthfulness. Beautiful athletic field with every facility for all healthful games and sports.
For catalogue apply to THE COMMANDANT.
NEW YORK, Broadway and 120th St.
H1\ r o l l Of Teachers’ College, Columbia
orace Mann bchools University. Perfect appointments for all grades. Physical Education Building open on Saturday. Out-of-door clubs. Afternoon study-hours. Open Monday, Sept. 20th. Circulars on application. SAMUEL T. DUTTON, Supt.
30, 32 and 34 East 57th Street, NEW YORK, N. Y.
The Merrill-van Laer School
Boarding and Day School for Girls. Formerly The Peebles and Thompson School.
An Old-Fashioned School
Not old-fashioned in its buildings or equipment, but plain and simple in its method of teaching—no frills. A school where young men are thoroughly prepared for college or for business life, with manual training when desired—such is the
Mount Pleasant Academy
Ossining-on-Hudson, N. Y.
Founded in 1814, it has ever been prosperous and popular. The location is a very desirable one from a health standpoint, and its proximity to New York affords many advantages. If interested in such a school, or in
Mount Pleasant Hall for boys under 13, write to CHARLES FREDERICK BRUSIE, Box 507
PEEKS KILL, N. Y.
n 1 1 *11 A 1 Founded 1833. College Preparatory. Mili-
L eekiskllll /Lcademy tary Organization. New $60,000 Dormitory or 80 boys, 1909. Attendance 1908-1909: Upper School 120; Lower School (Ages 11-13) 30. Address JOHN C. BUCHER. A. M. \Pr;n„
CHARLES A. ROBINSON, Ph. D./
POUGHKEEPSIE, N. Y., Box 806.
Putnam Hall School
Boarding school for girls. College Preparatory Departments and General Course. Certificates admit to leading colleges. For catalogue, address ELLEN CLIZBE BARTLETT, Principal.
RIVERVIEW ACADEMY
“A Good School/’—John Burroughs.
A Boys* School designed to promote manliness, self-reliance, love of study, and good scholarship.
Seventy-four years of consecutive management give to it a character second to none in the development of boys. Modern equipment, thorough instruction. Military officer detailed by Secretary of War.
C[ School opens Sept. 22nd. For catalogue address JOSEPH B. BISBEE, A.M., Box 706, Poughkeepsie, N. Y.
SYRACUSE, NEW YORK, 110 Baker Ave.
D k Q k 1 For Boys. A University and Technical Preparatory K-Ugby ocnool School. Small classes, Individual attention and Free Tutoring. Fine equipment. Rates $400. Takes its boys abroad during summer, offering unexcelled opportunity and recreation. Term opens Sept. 21. For catalog, address FRANK R. SHERMAN, Director.
ALBANY, NEW YORK.
St. Agnes’ School
For Girls. Re-opens Sept. 28th. Not a graded school. Average number in class, seven. Individual attention in studies and in household. Announcement sent on application,
Ossining School for Girls
Ossining=on=Hudson, New York
42nd Year. One hour from New York,giving access to city privileges. Modern buildings ; beautiful grounds. Academic, Music, Art and College Preparatory Courses. Post Graduate and Special Work. Certificate admits to leading colleges. Hampton Hall, Annex of the Ossining School, for Younger Girls. Ossining surrounds its students with influences of an attractive Christian home. Year Book of School sent on request.
MISS CLARA C. FULLER, Principal
16g
[pgbrk] McClure’s—The Marketplace of the World
CINCINNATI CONSERVATORY of MUSIC established. 1867.
Miss Clara Baur, Directress.
Instructs, trains and educates after the best methods of Foremost European Conservatories. The faculty numbers some of the Leading Musicians and Artists of today.
ELOCUTION MUSIC LANGUAGES Location ideal with respect to home comfort and luxurious surroundings.^ The most completely equipped buildings de» voted to music in America. Day and resident students may enter at any time. Illustrated Catalogue FREE.
MISS CLARA BAUR Highland Ave., Oak St. and Burnet Ave., Cincinnati, O.
Who Picks the
School ?
AURORA-ON-CAYUGA, NEW YORK.
... ,. Miss Goldsmith’s School for Girls. (Formerly
Wallcourt Wells School). On the east shore of Cayuea Lake. Thorough training for the leading women’s colleges. Strong General
Course of Study. For illustrated catalogue, address
tuicc axtxt a v nsMTTH. A.R..
EMMA WILLARD SCHOOL GIRLS.
General Course leading to diploma. Special Courses. Certificate admits to Wellesley, Vassar, Smith and Mount Holyoke Colleges, and Cornell University. Music and Art Departments. Fireproof buildings. Basketball, hookey and other out-of-door games. For catalogue, address Miss Anna Leacu, A.M., Principal, Troy, N. Y.
LAKEMONT, YATES COUNTY, NEW YORK, Box 405. q i o • On Seneca Lake. For young people of
MarKey ocminary ^4 years and upward. Christian training. Eleven teachers. Advanced courses in music and art. Vacancy now for 3 or 4 young women. Secure rooms in Spring for entrance in Fall.
MARTYN SUMMERBELL, Ph. D., President.
OBERLIN, OHIO, Drawer Z.
T7- • j . nr • • Exceptional advantages—Lectures
Kindergarten Training from professors of Oberlin College
—Courses in the College at special rates—Charges moderate. 16th year begins Sept. 22d, 1909. For catalogue address
SECRETARY OBERLIN KINDERGARTEN ASSOCIATION.
SOME schools appeal only to the boy. Others aim only to please the parents. St. Paul’s is a school which appeals to the boy and pleases the parents. To such parents and boys as desire a school with the fullest equipment, where special attention is given to the happiness and comfort of the boys, but which is managed for the boys and not by them, we commend our catalogue dealing in detail with the school. Sent on request.
ST. PAUL’S SCHOOL
n J I I WALTER R. MARSH
Liarden V/Ityj L. !• Head Master
OSSINING-ON-HUDSON, NEW YORK.
q T i > q i i Special opportunities for quick prepara-ot. JOnnS ocnool tion for college. Military drill. Modern improvements. Excellent gymnasium. Large athletic field. #500 a year covers all expenses. Write for catalogue.
REV. W. A. RANNEY, A.M., Pd.B., Principal.
BUFFALO, N. Y.
St. Margaret’s Day and Boarding School
A church school for Girls. College preparatory. General and Elective Courses. Music and Art. Certificate admits to Wellesley, Vassar, Smith and Woman’s College, Baltimore. Fine opportunities for physical development. Prices moderate. For catalogue address
MRS. HELEN HOLMES VAN WINKLE, Principal.
GARDEN CITY, LONG ISLAND. NEW YORK, p » » C U 1 A School for Girls, 18 miles from New York,
ot. Mary S ocnool Number limited. Healthful location; spacious buildings. College preparatory work. Excellent advantages in music and modern languages. References required. Miss ANNIE S. GIBSON, Principal. Miss MIRIAM A. BYTEL, Associate Principal.
and Conservatory of Music, Charlotte, N. C. A HIGH-GRADE COLLEGE FOR WOMEN
Ideal Climate—midway between Asheville and Pinehurst, New York and Florida. Beautiful suburban location, overlooking the city. 20 acre campus. $250,000 College Plant. Fireproof Buildings. 20 experienced, university-educated teachers. A. B. and Elective graduate ci urses. Music, Art, Expression. Write for catalog. C'HAS. B. KING. Pres.
F.VANSWOOD, CLIFTON, CINCINNATI.
The Bartholomew-Clifton School ForG!l'ls- An
attractive home
department for a limited number of resident pupils. Prepares for the best colleges Advanced course for High School Graduates. Music, Art, Languages. Miss E. A. ELY, A. M., and Miss M. F. SMITH, Principals.
GLENDALE. OHIO.
Glendale College for Women .r"
Traction. Prepares for all colleges. Collegiate courses lead to a diploma. Superior MUSIC and ART advantages. Location unsurpassed for beauty and healthfulness. A pleasant, attractive home.
MISS R. J. DE VORE, President.
16h
[pgbrk] McClure’s—The Marketplace of the World
What College?
Sixty-nine per cent of those whose names appear in 'Who’s Who in America” are college graduates. Since less than one per cent of the total population go to college, this shows that the college graduate’s chance of making a name in the world is 69 to 1.
Therefore the question of a college education is an important one. Scarcely less important is the choice of the college one will attend.
Any young man or woman considering college life will be interested in
GERMANTOWN, OHIO, (near Dayton).
M- tv/t'v t • Thorough college preparation,
lami Military Institute and courses leading to degrees. Individual instruction and care. 12 teachers. 75 selected Cadets. Commandant, U. S. Army Officer. Modern buildings. Gymnasium. Athletics. Write for Catalogue. ORVON GRAFF BROWN, M.A., President.
OBERLIN, OHIO, Box M.
y a i Eighteen instructors. Thoroughly equipped
tJDerlin /\.cauemy to prepare for any college or scientific-school. New courses in History and Science. New gymnasium. Expenses reasonable. Seventy-seventh year begins Sept. 22, 1909. For
catalogue apply to JOHN FISHER PECK, Principal.
COLLEGE HILL, OHIO. Box 26.
Ohio Military Institute
Ten miles from Cincinnati. High, beautiful location. Military drill subordinate to academic work- Lower school for younger boys. Certificate admits to colleges Athletics, A M. HENSHAW, Commandant.
Lake Erie
and
Conservatory
College
of Music
Standards of scholarship those of the leading colleges with emphasis upon care of health, the cultural value of beautiful surroundings and the training of women as teachers and home makers. The fiftieth anniversary has been celebrated by an increase of endowment and equipment. Board and tuition $300.
Two pipe organs, twenty pianos, course of artists’ recitals. Director of Conservatory, Harry Clyde Brooks, Mus. B.
ADDRESS THE REGISTRAR, LAKE ERIE COLLEGE, BOX B, PAINESVILLE, OHIO.
At Old Miami
>9
an illustrated booklet concerning Miami University at Oxford, Ohio. Dating from 1809, this is one of the historic schools of America. It is a slate Uni versily insuring highest standards in equipment and scholarship. Because of liberal state appropriations, expenses are very low. It is co-educational and nearly 600 students attended last year. The Liberal Art College offers a variety of courses leading to A. B. degree. The Normal College trains teachers. For years all graduates have secured good positions, the demand greatly exceeding the supply. A Sub-Freshman class offers an opportunity for students to complete their preparation lor college.
The booklet and any information desired will be sent free on request to
GUY POTTER BENTON, LL.D., President, Box 513, Oxford, Ohio
TheOxford College
For Women. Oxford, Ohio.
Founded 1830.
A college of the highest rank for women, equal in efficiency to any of the higher institutions of learning for women in the East.
Four years’ college course leading to A.B. degree. Strong College Preparatory Course with certificate privileges to all leading colleges. Domestic Science.
Rare advantages in Music, Art and Oratory.
Building equipped with all modern improvements. Excellent sanitation. Pure water. Unusually healthful and beautiful location, only one hourfrom Cincinnati.
Splendid facilities for all outdoor sports. Physical training in charge of a competent director.
Rates only $300 a year.
For catalogue, address the President.
.TANE SHERZER, Ph.D. (Berlin). Box 12.
Ike Birminqham School
is a Incorporated
For Girls
tution believes in, and exemplifies, tlie motto, “A Sound Mind in a Sound Body.’" Its location, in a high, healthful section of the Alleghenies, is at once beautiful and. easy of access via the P. R. R. Buildings are surrounded by 100 acres of park land. Academic and Preparatory Courses, Music, and Art are offered. Gymnasium and Athletic Grounds, with competent Physical director. Handsome buildings; delightful home life. Catalogue on request.
A. R. GRIER, President Box K, Birmino'ham, Pa.
DEVON, PA.
The Devon School
For Girls. A home school for girls in one of the most beautiful suburbs of Philadelphia. The formation of character its prime object. Course cf Instruction—Academic and College Preparatory.. Buildingj —modern and sanitary. Location—very high and healthful. Out-door sporis encouraged. Sociahside of life has proper attention. Tuition $500 per year.
LANCASTER, PENNSYLVANIA.
Franklin and Marshall Academy ful, healthful location.
Enters about 40 boys to colleges each year. No smoking. Use of library. 55,000 wlumes.- New $100,000 building added. Ample grounds, gymnasium, athletic field. Terms $3 50 a year. Illustrated catalogue'.
T. G. HELM and E. M. HARTMAN, Principals
16i
[pgbrk] McClure’s—-The Marketplace of the World
HOLLIDAYSBURG, PENNSYLVANIA, Drawer G-2.
The Hollidaysburg Seminary
location. Individual instruction and care. Music a specialty. 43rd school year begins September 29, 1909. Address
(Mrs.) CHARLOTTE COMSTOCK GRAY, B.D., A.M.. Pres.
FACTORYVILLE. PENNSYLVANIA, Box C.
tv- a j Co-educational. Endowed school. $240 per
iveystone /\caaemy year. Four years’ Preparatory course for all colleges. Commercial course. Strong Departments in Piano and Vocal Music. Large campus,lake front,athletic field. Location in a village of refined homes. No factories. Catalogue. H. LOREN FASSETT, A.B., Principal.
LITITZ, LANCASTER CO.. PENNSYLVANIA.
Linden Hall Moravian Seminary
For girls and young women. Founded 1794.
REV. CHAS. D. KREIDER, Principal.
CONCORD VILLE, DELAWARE CO., PA., BOX 17.
■ji /r i j Near Philadelphia. 48th year. Wakes up boys to
IViapieWOOQ the duties of life. $375. Depart, for Little Boys, 12 years and under, $325. Limited to 40 boys. College or Business. No tobacco, no hazing. Fine gymnasium. Vacation, June 4 to Sept. 16, with or without instruction, $110. All outdoor sports.
J. SHORTLIDGE, A.M., Yale. Prin.
MERCERSBURG, PENNSYLVANIA.
Mercersburg Academy
A school for boys, healthfully located in one of the most picturesque sections of Pennsylvania. Thorough instruction, college preparatory work being especially successful. Personal interest is taken in each boy, the aim being to inspire in every pupil the lofty ideals of thorough scholarship, broad attainments, sound judgment and Christian manliness. Modem buildings. Fine athletic field. For catalogue and further information, address
... WILLIAM MANN IRVINE. Ph. D.. President. PENNSBURG, PENNSYLVANIA, Box 107.
New buildings, new campus, athletic field. Small classes.. Honor men in 30 colleges. Music,. Elocution. Strongly moral. No profanity, liquor, tobacco or hazing. $220 to $270. Catalogue free. REV. 0* S. KRIEBEL, D.D., Principal.
n t • o * Go-educational,
rerkiomen bemmary gymnasium.
“A thorough and honest school, the kind Of school to which sensible parents desire to send their sons.”—Bishop Whitaker.
For
BOYS
St. Luke’s School
WAYNE, PA., 14 miles from Philadelphia.
For forty-six years (25 years under present headmaster) St. Luke’s has been eminently successful as a school for boys.
Its attractive home life and careful individual instruct tion promote contentment and high scholarship.
Buildings ail new, specially planned to meet every requirement.
Locality remarkable for healthfulness, natural beauty and freedom from undesirable influences.
Gymnasium with swimming pool and shower baths. Grounds of 80 acres, including large athletic field with quarter mile cinder track and facilities for outdoor games.
Boys prepared for any college or for business. Terms $800 a year. For illustrated catalogue address
CHARLES HENRY STROUT, A.M., Headmaster
SWARTHMORE
Preparatory School
Under the influence and management of priends.
Half hour from Philadelphia; beautiful location; commodious, modern buildings and conveniences. Separate cottage system; delightful home life. Pre* pares for College, Technical School and Business. Coeducational.
Athletics are encouraged, and ample provision is made for outdoor and indoor sports. Two-story gymnasium equipped with swimming pool, base ball cage, bowling alleys, etc.; running track in athletic fleld.
Tuition and board, $450. SUMMER SESSION.
Year book on request.
ARTHUR H. TOMLINSON, Principal, Swarthmoret Pa.
Walnut Lane School For Girls
Germantown, Philadelphia
62d Year. Both resident and day pupils; regular and elective courses. Preparation for all leading colleges. The School is delightfully situated with respect to naturally beautiful environments, and offers easy access to Philadelphia, with its notable attractions in Art and Music.
Attractive Senior House; ample recreation grounds. Sun Parlor; resident Physical Director.
Catalogue mailed on request.
THEODORA B. RICHARDS, Principal.
WASHINGTON, PENNSYLVANIA.
Washington and Jefferson Academy ihf'rTStoJ
preparation. Spacious grounds. Athletic field. Large gymnasium. New fire-proof dormitory. Home life. Fall term opens Sept. 22. Rooms reserved now. For illustrated catalogue address JAMES N. RULE, Principal.
AiVilson College
„ FOR WOMEN , . Chambersburg Pa.
An institution that compares f avorably'with the highest grade women’s colleges in the country. Four years’ course leading to degree A.B. A finely equipped music department affords many advantages lor the study of both vocal and instrumental music. Art department. Faculty of 83 experienced teachers.
Fourteen buildings with all modem improve- '
. ments. Fifty acres of grounds. Healthful loca-i tion. Terms moderate. For catalog address H. H. REISER, Ph.D., President,
21 College Avenue
PENN HALL—On Wilson College Campus. A thoroughly good preparatory school for young women. Address
9 PENN HALL, Chambersburg, Pa.
KINGSTON, PENNSYLVANIA.
tit • n - Founded in 1844. Co-educational. College
Wyoming bcminziry Preparatory and Business Courses. Departments of Music, Art and Oratory. Fine buildings. Beautiful location. Yearly rates, $350. 65th year open9 Sept. 15th. Catalogue on request. Address L. L. SPRAGUE, D.D., LL.D., President.
LANCASTER, PA., Box 526.
Yeates School
Established 1854—Endowed Calls out the best in every boy by its high standard of honor, its home life and thoroughness of training. An enviable record in scholarship and athletics before and after enteiing college.
_______FREDERIC GARDINER. A.M. (Harvard). Headmaster.
Converse College
SPARTANBURG, S. C.
A College for Women, Conservatory of Music, School of Art. Confers degrees of A. B., A. M., A. Mus., B. Mus. Laboratories, library, 56 piano rooms, auditorium, art studios, chapel, gymnasium. Rooms single, double and en suite. Boating and out-of-door sports. Delightful winter climate.
ROB*T P. PELL, Litt.D., President.
16j
[pgbrk] McClure’s—The Marketplace of the World
A Carefully-Planned Education For Your Boy
Your boy needs a broader training—an education more fully rounded out—than your public school can possibly offer. Porter Military Academy will give him a thorough preparation for College—Languages, Science, History, Music, and Mechanical Drawing, together with that element of military training necessary to teach him the value of neatness, punctuality and obedience. The success of
— Porter Military Academy
has resulted from its forty-two years of painstaking attention to the individual, rather than to the group.
Its graduates number men of affairs throughout the country.
Ideal climate, permitting outdoor sports all the year. Notably strong Faculty, well-qualified and carefully chosen, each for his special department. Gymnasium with swimming pool; athletic field.
A Catalogue containing interesting facts will be mailed upon request to
REV. WALTER MITCHELL, B. D., Rector, Charleston, S. C.
CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA
Ashley Hall
A very select Boarding School for girls, delightfully situated and splendidly equipped. Thorough preparation for all leading Colleges; courses in Science. History, Languages, Music, Art and Elocution. Able faculty, including native French teacher. Healthful climate; liberal advantages; outdoor sports all the year Tuition and board $400. Address
MISS MARY VARDRINE McBEE, M.A., Principal. RAPID CITY, SOUTH DAKOTA.
South Dakota State School of Mines
The state mining school, located in the Black Hills of South Dakota. Courses in Mining and Metallurgical Engineering. Expenses low. Twenty third year opens September 15th, 1909. For catalog address the Secretary.
NASHVILLE, TENNESSEE
Ward Seminary
For Girls and Young Women. 45th year.. Seminary and Special Courses. College Preparation, Conservatory of Music. 175 Boarding Pupils. Complete appointments. City advantages. Outdoor sports. Delightful climate. For catalog, address,
J. D. BLANTON, LL. D., President.
BARRE, VERMONT.
J J J C ’ *n l^e heart °f lhe Green Mountains. Co-
VjrOQQ3.rQ bemmary educational. General and College Preparatory courses. Special courses in Art and Music. Modern buildings Exceptional athletic training. Endowment reduces cost to $200 a year.
ORLANDO K. HOLLISTER. Litt.D., Principal.
a TV T• i• A J (Roller’s School). In the
Augusta Military Academy famous Shenandoah Valley. A country school with modern equipment. Electric lights. Steam heat. Gymnasium in course of construction, containing bowling-alley, swimming-pool, etc. Experienced instructors, 35 years of successful work. For catalogue. address FORT DEFIANCE. VIRGINIA.
NEAR WARRENTON, VA.
i tv /f*i* a i Oldest preparatory school in Vir-
Bethel Military Academy ginia. Fifty miles from Washington. Unsurpassed location. Prepares for Business, Universities and Government Academies. Individual attention. Charges $300. For illustrated catalogue, address COL. WM. M. KEMPER, Superintendent.
DANVILLE, VA., Box 103.
qni ‘11 C u 1 F°r Boys. Modern buildings in the
1 fie Uanville oCtlOOl country, a half mile from the corporate limits. Preparations for the universities or for business life-t Home and tuition $300. Session opens Sept. 14th. Write for booklet, “My Boys— My Friends.” WM. HOLMES DAVIS, Headmaster.
MANASSAS. VIRGINIA.
T? C* 11 For Young Men and Women. Formerly at Front
eastern V_/OllCgC Royal,now occupying its new and modem buildings on campus of 15 acres.in the Battlefield City,suburban to Washington. Offers Preparatory,College, Normal, Business,Music and Art courses. Yearly rates $225. For Catalogue, address 1. F. MATHER, A.M., Dean.
WARRENTON, VA., Box
Fauquier Institute
For Young Ladies. The 50th session begins Sept. 23d, 1909. Situated in Piedmont region of Virginia, 55 miles from Washington. A limited and thorough home school. Rates, $200 upwards. Catalogue.
NELLIE V. BUTLER, Principal.
Fishbiirne Military School
Waynesboro, Va. Beautifully situated, in magnificent campus. Noted for its able instructors, thorough work and for its high standard of scholarship. Attendance last year from 14 States. Rates $350 per annum. Session begins September 16th. Write for illustrated Catalogue
JAS. A. IISHBURNE, A.B., Principal, I;ox 207
WINCHESTER VIRGINIA (Shenandoah Valley).
T? . r l o • F°r Young Ladies. Literary and
.T Ort .Loudoun uCminffry Business Courses; College Pre paratory Music. Art and Languages. Non-sectarian Terms $250. Opens September 14th Circular.
MISS KATHERINE R. GLASS. Principal.
HOLLINS
INSTITUTE
Founded 1842
A College for Girls Four years A of College work Elective and Preparatory Courses, Music, Art, etc Beautifully located in the Valley of Virginia, seven miles from Roanoke. The invigorating mountain climate and picturesque scenery combine to render this location one of the most desirable in the country for a girls’ school The seven main buildings are of brick and are well equipped On the extensive grounds are mineral springs of valuable medicinal qualities. For catalogue address MISS MATTY L. COCKE, President. Box 309, Hollins, Va.
VA.
BEDFORD CITY,
Randolph-Macon Academy
For Boys and Young Men. Fits for college, scientific schools or business. Work endorsed by over 30 colleges and universities. Beautiful and healthful location. Athletic grounds; gymnasium. Terms only $230. No extras. For ca'a'ogue. add-ess E. SUMTER SMITH, Prin.
STAUNTON, VIRGINIA.
q rj n Formerly Virginia Female Institute. Church School
otuart nan for Girls in Blue Ridge Mountains. Intermediate and College Preparatory. New Gymnasium and Infirmary. 66th Session. Travel School abroad. Catalogue.
MARIA PENDLETON DUVAL. Principal.
CHARLES TOWN, WEST VIRGINIA.
p ■» p |i Largest woman’s college in the State. Col-
X OWnatail LOllege iege preparatory and full college courses; Music, Art, Elocution. Normal course for teachers and a well-equipped. Business Course. Beautiful and healthful location. Rates $200 and upward. For catalogue, address S. P. HATTON, A.M.. LL.D., President.
16k
[pgbrk] McClure’s—The Marketplace of tne world
STAUNTON MILITARY ACADEMY
An Ideal Home School lor Manly Boys
365 Boys from 45 States last session. Largest Fnvate Academy in the South. Boys from 10 to 20 years old prepared for the Universities, Government Academies, or Business.
1,600 feet above sea-level; pure, dry, bracing mountain air of the famous proverbially healthful and beautiful Valley of the Shenandoah. Pure mineral spring waters. High moral tone. Parental discipline. Military training develops obedience, health, manly carriage. Fine, shady lawns, expensively equipped gymnasium, swimming pool and athletic park. All manly sports encouraged. Daily drills and exercises in open flO’. Boys from homes of culture and refinement only desired. Personal, individual instruction by our Tutorial system. Standards and traditions high. Academy forty-nine years old. New $100,000 barracks, full equipment, absolutely fireproof. Charges $360.
Handsome catalogue free. Address,
CAPTAIN WM. H. KABLE, A. M., Principal, Staunton, Va.
Randolph-Macon
Woman’s College
LYNCHBURG. VIRGINIA.
Classed by the U. S. Commissioner of Education as one of the sixteen “A” Colleges for women m the United States. Four Laboratories; Astronomical Observatory. Gymnasium; Swimming Pool; Athletic Grounds ; boating course, etc. Fifty acres in the campus. Endowment reduces cost to students t6 8300 a year for full literary cpurses. For catalogue, address vv m. w. smith, a.m., ll. i>., President, Box 135.
^ _ for women was opened in September, 1906. It is located in the foot hills of
N|A/PPt flflfir I Al IPnC the Blue Kidge Mountains on an estate of three thousand acres. To the old Lrl IUI VVf fl ICVIC homestead of its founder, Sweet Briar House, new and magnificent buildings
have been added. The conditions for health are unsurpassed.
Sweet Briar offers a college course eqnal in its standard to the courses given in colleges of the first rank. In addition two vears of preparatory work, corresponding to the last two years of a high school course, are offered. ’
Sweet Briar is 011 the main line of the Southern Railway, south of Washington. The fourth coUege year opens Sept. 21st 1909 Catalogue and views sent on application to UR. M ART K. BENEDICT, President, Box 110, Sweet Briar, Virginia.
This school has an ideal location—altitude of 1900 feet with a climate similar to that of Asheville, N. C. The grounds are beautiful, and the four-story brick and stone building contains 165 rooms with all modern equipments. University and Conservatory trained teachers. Music school of 200 pupils, with 28 new pianos. Fine Art Department. Board and regular course $200 to $300. For Catalogue address
Pres. J. T. HENDERSON, M.A., Box 119, Bristol, Virginia.
ST.JOHNS MILITARY ACADEMY!
St. John’s is famous for the esprit of its students and the loyalty of its graduates. It has won a national reputation for the thoroughness of its scholastic work, the excellence of its military instruction and the perfection of its physical training. It is rated by the Government as a military school of the “A” or first class. Its equipment is unexcelled. Address
ST. JOHN’S MILITARY ACADEMY (File E)
Delafield, Waukesha Co., Wis.
CHICAGO OFFICE-1515 Masonic Temple.
Virginia fs* Institute
Select School For Girls
Patronage from Many States
16l
[pgbrk] McClure’s—The Marketplace of the World
Too late for classification
Chicago Musical College
Now in its NEW HOME Facing the Lake Front Park.
The finest building of its kind in the world. Valuation $1,000,000.00. Housing the largest of all institutions of Musical Learning.
Containing An Ideal Auditorium—offering unsurpassed facilities for
..... rehearsals and public appearances of students in Concert, ZIEGFELD HALL Opera and the Drama.
All branches of
School of Acting lilf I T C I C* School of Expression
Opera AY A ky A V/ Modern Languages
Acquisitions f ANTON FOI5RSTK11—The Eminent Pianist and Instructor of Berlin, to the faculty IALEXANDER SEBALD—The Famous Hungarian Violinist.
New Chicago Musical College Building Founded 1867 DR. F. ZIEGFELD, Pres. »
246-7-8-9 Michigan Boulevard, Chicago Mailed free
NOTE—Applications for the 45 free and 130 partial Scholarships will be received until September ist.
Miss C. E. Mason’s si^tN
For Girls and Young Women
T arry town-on- Hudson, N. Y.
Write for circular descriptive of College Preparatory, Graduating and Special Courses in Art, Music, Elocution, Languages, Literature, Science, Nature Study, Handicrafts and Domestic Science. Address
Miss C. E. Mason, LL.M., lock Box 708
Crowns one of the most beautiful heights of the Hudson, with a 30-mile view of the river, and only 40 minutes from New York. A thoroughly modern school with an unusually large faculty, one teacher to three scholars, and offering courses almost as varied and broad as many of the best colleges. The social and school life is wholesome and ideal, and the manner of living lends toward simplicity raihcr than extravagance.
,,cUhe Caslle”
Oldest and Largest in ~| Middle West
Wentworth
Military Academy
Government Supervision. Highest ratingby War Department. Infantry, Artillery and Cavalry Drills. Courses of study prepare for Universities, Government Academies or for Business Life. Accredited by North Central Association of Schools and Colleges. Manual Training. Separate Department for small boys.
For catalogue, address The SECRETARY, Box Y , Lexington, Mo.
yuthem SeminarlJ
43rd Year. In famous Valley of Virginia, near Natural Bridge. Combines thorough modern instruction with the refinements . of home life. Personal attention, cultivation of manners and character. University specialists as instructors. Thorough pre-paration for College; Finishing Courses.
' A OUII5 Music, Art, Elocution. Remarkably healthful 7 location.Extensivegroundsforoutdoorsports.
MduicS Modern buildings Rates $260. Catalogue. Address SOUTHERN SEMINARY, Box 720, Buena Vista, Va.
WASHINGTON, D. C., 1756-1758-1760-1762 Columbia Road-r-p, q q i i For Young Ladies and Girls. Ail Depart-
1 lie Otuart ocnool ments. Elective courses. Unusual advantages. Preparation for European travel. 38 States have been represented tu boarding department. Catalogue 80 pages. Outdoor sports. New buildings.
MISS CLAUDIA STUART. Principal.
NORWALK, CONNECTICUT
Miss Baird’s School for Girls.
Preparatory and General Courses. Superior advantages in Music, Art and the Languages. Gymnasium. The borne life is replete with inspiration.
16m
[pgbrk] McClure’s—The Marketplace of the World
District of Columbia, Washington, D. C., 35 Takoma Avenue.
ELECTRICITY
Bliss Electrical School is the oldest and best school in the world teaching ELECTRICITY exclusively. Course complete
IN ONE YEAR
Students actually construct Dynamos, Motors and electrical instruments. Graduates hold good positions. Seventeenth year opens September 22. Send for free Catalog.
COPY THIS SKETCH
and let me see what you can do with it. You can earn $20.00 to $125.00 or moie per week, as illustrator or cartoonist tor newspapers or magazines. My practical system of personal individual lessons by mail will develop your talent. Fifteen years successful work for newspapers and magazines qualifies me to teacli you. Send me your sketch of President Taft with 6c. in stamps and I will send you a test lesson plate, also collection of drawings showing possibilities tor YOU.
The LANDON SCHOOL °a n d1^ H tT)OI?I jf1
1442 Bohofield Building, Cleveland. 0.
NCLE SAM WANTS YOU
and thousands of others to work for him. Common school education sufficient. 40,000 appointments yearly in Bailway Mail, Postal, Customs, Internal Revenue, and other branches of U. S. service, Philippines and Panama. Full particulars free concerning positions, salaries, examinations (held soon in every State), sample examination questions, etc. IfAT’E COR. INSTITUTE, 21-40 3d Nat ’1 Bank Bldg., Washington, D. C.
Government Positions
Aa 71 *> a ^ were made to Civil Service places dur-
4b, 712 Appointments ing ^ past year> Excellent opportunities for young people. Each year we instruct by mail thousands of persons who pass these examinations and a large share of them receive appointments to life positions at $840 to $1,500ayear. If you desire a position of this kind, write for our Civil Service Announcement, containing full information about all government examinations and questions recently used by the Civil Service Commission.
COLUMBIAN CORRESPONDENCE COLLEGE. WASHINGTON. D. C.
SHORT STORIES —lc. to Sc. a Word
We sell stories, plays, and book MSS. on commission ; we criticize and revise them and tell you where to sell them. Story-Writing and Journalism taught by mail. Send for fiee booklet, “Writing for Profit:” tells how. THE NATIONAL PRESS ASSOCIATION, 112 The Baldwin, Indianapolis, Ind.
STAMMERING
A new booklet, “Trials And Triumph Of A Stammerer”, describes in dialogue form many interesting situations and characters, true to life ; gives also valuable information and advice. Send twelve cents or call for it today. Students received h ere all summer as for many years past.
A. BUYANT, M.D., Principal. 62 B West 40th Street, New York
Earn $25
to $100 a Week
We wfll teach you by correspondence the most fascinating and profitable profession fn the world. Send for our »beautiful prospectus. It’s Free.
PAGE-DAVIS SCHOOL
Address f Dept. 765, Pape Building, Chicago L either o_ffice t Dept- 765. l/.ONaBiau St., New York
American Academy of Dramatic Arts
Founded in 1884.
FRANKLIN H. SARGENT, President.
Its exceptional facilities and complete organization have made it the recognized leading institution for dramatic training, in this country. Connected with Mr. Chas. FroJiman's Empire Theatre and Companies.
For information apply to The Secretary, 146 Carnegie Hall. New York, N. Y.
CERTIFIED PUBLIC ACCOVNTANT
The only professions In which the demand exceeds the supply-We equip you for practice anywhere. No classes; Individual Instruction. Courses embrace Theory of Accounts. Practical Accounting, Auditing, Commercial Law, Cost Accounting, Bookkeeping and Business Practice. Write for Booklet F. UNIVERSAL BUSINESS INSTITUTE, Dept. F.
27=29 East 22nd Street, New York.
Recognized Accountancy School of the World.
Chicago Kent College of
Evening Courses; Degree LL.B. in 3 years.
Largest evening law school in the world.
Thousands of successful Alumni. We find positions in Law Offices for many students yearly so that they may earn expenses while working toward degree. Rare chance for ambitious young men. Send for Free Catalog. Address GUY GUERNSEY, Sec., Suite 20 Y, The Temple, CHICAGO
LAW
LEARN PLUMBING
A trade that will make you independent. Hours Shorter— Pay Bigger — Demand Greater than any other trade. Catalog free. Write for it today.
♦ST. LOUIS TRADES SCHOOL. 4441 Olive St., St. Louis, Mo.
CTI I Beading: Law School in
V I W I Correspondence lnstruc-_ M ■■■ tion* Established 1892.
BKI Prepares for the bar. Three Courses . WKKm College, Post-Graduate and Business |BlB Law. Method of instruction com-SB W bines theory and practice. Approved by the bench and bar.
Classes begin each month. Send for catalog giving rules for admission to the bar of the several states.
Chicagro Correspondence School of Law 507 Reaper Block. Chicago
fife
I TEACH SIGN PAINTING
Show Card Writing or lettering by mail and guarantee success. Only field not overcrowded. My instruction is unequalled because practical, personal and thorough. Easy terms. Write for large catalogue. Chas. J. Strong, Pres.
DETROIT SCHOOL OF LETTERING
Dept. F. DETROIT, MICH.
“Oldest and Largest School of its Kind.”
I won the World’s First Prize in Penmanship.-'By
my new system I can make an expert penman of you by mail.
I also teach Book-keeping and Shorthand. Am placing my students as Instructors in commercial colleges. If y ou wish to become a better penman, write me. I will send you F1SEE one of my Favorite Pens and a copy of the Ransomerian Journal.
p w dancdm 93Q RFl IANHE BLDG.. KANSAS CITY. MO.
16n
[pgbrk] McClure’s—The Marketplace of the World
K01WHERE-TO-GO
a BEACONST. BOSTON. J
TRAVEL
Late Vacation Tours
ENGLAND SWITZERLAND
GERMANY HOLLAND
July, August, September *335 to *535
Sailings as late as Aug. 21 Send for Announcement Bureau of University Travel,
49 Trinity Placo _________Boston, Mass.
The Boston Xravel Society Journeys are a little better and more distinctive than any others at similar prices Europe $250 and up; Japan $550. Round the World 81,450, $1,875, $2,100. 111. Itineraries. 215 Berkeley BIdg.. Boston, Mass.
IIHTn C1 In Europe. Brochure ill I I Til j.X based on years of experience describing most desirable hotels all over Europe. Free. Xhe Chautauqua Xoars, Appleton, Wis.
BALTIMORE MD.
E. $1.50. Baltimore’s i lie J5.CUUC11. leading hotel. Typical Southern cooking, The kitchen of this hotel has made Maryland cooking famous.
CHICACO ILL.
Chicago Beach Hotel Finest Hotel on Great Lakes
American or European Plan—an ideal resort for rest or pleasure, 51st Blvd. and Lako Shore, Chicago —only ten minutes’ ride from city; close to the famous golf links of South Park System. 450 large, airy, outside rooms; 250 private baths. Guests can find perfect quiet or enjoy all summer gaieties. Table always the best. Nearly 1000 feet of veranda overlooking Lake Michigan beach. Write for booklet.
NEW YORK
Hotel Empire. r^SS;
beautifully situated. Most excellent cuisine and service. Large rooms $1.50 per day; with bath $2 per day. Suites $3.50 up.* Free Guide, W. Johnson Quinn,Prop.
LONG BEACH CAL.
COOL IN SUMMER, warm in winter at Long Beach Sanitarium. Battlo Creek methods. Finest and best equipped Sanitarium west of Battle Creek. Beautiful Booklet Free.
SAN FRANCISCO CAL.
Fairmont Hotel,
cisco Bay and city h'dq’trs Army and Navy, social center of city. E. P. {2.50 up. Every room has bath.*
WASHINGTON D. C.
HOTEL DRISCOLL
New, modern. Facing U. S. Capitol and park. Near Union Station and ointsof interest. Free aths. Music is a feature. Amer. $2.50. Eur. $1.00. Booklet.
The Shoreham affiSS:
ionable section,five minutes’ walk to White House, U. S. Treasury, State, War and Navy Departments. John T. Devine, Prop. *
CANADA
Pnirnl TVTllclT'ftVo MuskokaLakes, Canada. XvUydl iTlUSKUKd, 0pens june26th. Finest hotel in most charming resort region in America. Golf. Tennis, Fishing. Booklet. Muskoka Navigation Co., Box 10, Gravenhurst, Canada.
MT. MORRISON COLO.
Mt. Morrison Hotel
looking most wonderful Rock formation in State. Large swimming pool, tennis, gcod mountain trails, saddle ponies, trout fishing. Send for free booklet. Denver Office, Room 210 Mercantile Building.
ATLANTIC CITY N.J.
Atlantic Pitv marlborough-
iilldlllic Lily. BLENHEIM.
Above illustration shows but one section of this magnificent and sumptuously fitted house—the Open Air Plaza and Enclosed Solariums overlook the Board-walk and the Ocean. The environment, convenience and comforts of theMarlborough-Blenheim and the invigorating climate at Atlantic City make this the ideal place for a Summer sojourn. Always open. Write for handsomely illustrated booklet. Josiali White and Sons Company, Proprietors and Directors. *
ATLANTIC CITY, N. J. VjdlCll Xld.il* jj0tei and Sanatorium. New stone, brick and steel building. Always open, always ready, always busy. Table and attendance unsurpassed. *
____________LONG ISLAND
ARVERNE HOTEL
Arverne*by-the-Sea, Long Island
Hot and cold running water in every room. Suites with private bath. Finest beach and surf bathing 011 the coast. 40 min. from N. Y. City. I. H. Rosenfeld, Prop. *
LAKE GEORGE N. Y.
HOTEL MARION. Most beautifully located, on high bluff. Large verandas. Delightful lawns. Charming walks and drives. All games in and out of doors. New Country Club, Golf links, tennis courts, adjoins hotel. Tournaments. Regattas, etc.
MATTEAWAN N. Y.
NEW HOTEL “ BEACONCREST”
Mt. Beacon, Matteawan, N. Y. Finest view on the Hudson River, overlooking Newburgh Bay, pure air, sparkling spring water. Cottage sites to rent. Send for Booklet. E. S. Whitney, Mgr.__
RJCHFIELD SPRINGS N. Y._____
The BERKEL£Y■ WAIOXTHA
All conveniences of modern hotel. Bathing establishment in the park opposite the hotel. Great white sulphur springs. Perfect climate. Address Wm. T. Johnson, Mgr.
(A .) A merican Plan ; (P.) European Plan.
* Write for further information.
For space in this department address Where-to-go Bureau, 8 Beacon 8t., Boston.
NEW YORK
Hotel Champlain
Clinton County, N. Y. In center of Natural Park. Golf, Tennis, Fishing, Bathing, Garage. Del. and Hudson Co., owners. Robt. Murray, Mgr.
Fort William Henry LISIeom*
Warren County, N. Y. Largest Hotel on Lake. Entirely rehabilitated by Del. and Hudson Co., owners. J. F. Wilson, Mgr. Booklets, information of both hotels, 243 Fifth Avenue, N. Y.
SULLIVAN COUNTY N.Y.
WALNUT MOUNTAIN HOUSE
liberty Station, New York.
A modern hotel and cottage on summit of the highest mountain in Sullivan Co. For booklet and rates address S. A. Louis, Mgr.
WESTMINSTER PARK N. Y.
Hotel Westminster, oXewwYl.
lands,”finest location on the St. Lawrence. Boating, Bathing, Fishing, Golf, Tennis, Baseball. Send for Booklet. Address H. F. Inglehart, Westminster Park, N Y.____
BROOKSIDE W. VA.
BROOKSIDE INN AND COTTAGES
Altitude 2,500 feet. Send for illustrated Booklet of the most ideal mountain resort in America. E. J. Kirkpatrick, Brookside, West Virginia. * __________ _______
CAPON SPRINGS W. VA.
PAPON^P^TNr;^ An ideal mountain Giir UH orJA1DI HO summer place. 100 miles west of Washington. Cool, comfortable, good table, large company. Music. Dancing. Reasonable rates. Pamphlet. * Charles F. Nelson, Capon Springs, W. Ya.
SARATOGA N. Y.
SARATOGA SPRINGS
Largest number, more variety mineral springs than in any other place in the world. Magnificent hotels and good boardinghouses. Popular prices. Golf and polo grounds. Free Booklets. Address
Business Men’s Committee.
No Place Like”
PO'RTLA JVT>
Maine, for your vacation Always cool—water sports, beautiful scenery—excellent hotels and boarding houses. Write for handsome, illustrated booklet.
M. C. RICH, Sec’y Board of Trade, 44 Exchange Street. Portland, Me.
WnT T YRFAfR (N.J.) The very best bath-ilULL A jngi fishing, boating, all
amusements. Good hotels, moderate rates. An enjoyable vacation assured. Write Sec’y Board of Trade, for handsomely illustrated booklet.
“A SUMMER PARADISE”
Illustrated, gives accurate, detailed information re. hotels, boarding houses, etc., along the Delaware and Hudson lines. 6c postage. A. A. Heard, G.P.A., Albany.N.Y.
l/fcr 1/ rates, Wr by Hot
GOING TO ATLANTIC CITY
New York, Phila., or Wash., D. C., send 4c postage for 80-page Guide of hotels, with rates, City Maps and all attractions. Sent free by Hotel Bureau, Box 895, Atlantic City, N. J.
WHY PA Y EXTRA VA GANT HO TEL RA TES?
CLENDENING APARTMENT HOTEL
196 WEST 103(1 STREET, N.Y.
Select Homelike Economical
Suites of P.irlor, Bedroom and Bath from $1.50 daily to Parlor, three Bedrooms and Bath at $4.00 per day for the Suite, not for each person.
Superior Restaurant at Reasonable Prices Write for Booklet D witli Map of City
THE AMERICAN BOY-For Boys
A live, beautifully illustrated magazine of all that is interesting and wholesome for boys. Develops their own resources.
Very best stories, sports, games, practical departments on doing and making things. Only $1 a year. At news-stands 10c. SPRAGUE PUBLISHING CO., 99 Majestic BIdg., Detroit, Mi eh.
THE “ HELLO99 PUZZLE
Craze Has Struck the Country CAN YOU RING OFF?
The newest brain teaser. You simply can't drop it until you have removed the steel ring from the celluloid disc. Easy when you know how, but—! ! Send us the name of your toy dealer and 15 cents stamps or coin, and we will send you a HELLO PUZZLE also our BIG Catalogue No. 16 of 1000 useful and amusing novelties. Agents wanted.
THE N. Y. NEWS COMPANY,
Dept. 1,15 Warren Street, New York
Copy for August McCLURE’S Now Due
16o
[pgbrk] McClure’s—The Marketplace of the World
IN CELEBRATION OF THE HUDSON-FULTON CELEBRATION
THE “FULTON EDITION” OF WASHINGTON IRVING’S WORKS
The approaching celebration commemorating the discovery of the Hudson River and the successful application of steam to navigation by Robert Fulton> is the occasion of The Century Co.’s issuing a new and richly illustrated edition of the Works of Washington Irving.
The name and fame of Irving is no less intimately associated 'with the Hudson River than that of the daring navigator who discovered it three hundred years ago, or the artist-inventor who. two centuries later, first ploughed its waters in a vessel successfully driven by steam. It would be a trite saying that “ no library is complete without Irving”—but it would be more to the point to say that
The Fulton Edition of Irving
NO AMERICAN HOME IS COMPLETE WITHOUT IRVING
The edition is in seven volumes, handsomely bound in blue-gray cloth, with gilt tops, comprising the following titles: Vol. I. Sketch Book; II. The Crayon Papers, Wolfert’s Roost, and Miscellanies; III. Bracebridge Hall, Abbotsford; IV. Tales of a Traveler, A Tour on the Prairies; V. Knickerbocker’s History of New
York; VI. The Alhambra, Newstead Abbey; VII. Astoria. Containing twenty-eight illustrations by Remington, Castaigne, F. T. Merrill, E. W. Kemble, George Wharton Edwards, and Albert E. Sterner; with reproductions of the famous Darley pictures, interesting portraits, etc.
AN UNPRECEDENTED BOOK OFFER
If you will fill out and send us the coupon on this page, sending no money now, we will forward immediately to your address the Fulton Edition of Irving’s Works, and we will include in the offer the following:
LONGFELLOW’S POEMS
A beautiful volume of just the proper size and shape (5 x inches). Printed in large, clear type on good paper, and bound in flexible morocco grain, with round corners and full gilt edges.
THE COMPLETE POEMS AND TALES OF E. A. POE.
With introduction by Hamilton Wright Mabie,—beautifully illustrated with sixteen striking full-page pictures, the binding is a silk ribbed, raven-black cloth (gilt tops); the text printed from new plates on paper of fine quality.
Longfellow*s Poems
You Get All These Books and The Century Magazine for One Year (or St. Nicholas, if preferred).
Poe*s Complete Poems and Tales
16p
[pgbrk]
[pgbrk] MR. WILLIAM ARCHER
AUTHOR OF “ BLACK AND WHITE IN THE SOUTH," PAGE 324
[pgbrk] McCLURE’S MAGAZINE
VOL. XXXIII JULY, 1909 No. 3
OUTPOSTS OF EMPIRE
BY
ELEANOR STUART
ILLUSTRATIONS BY WLADYSLAW T. BENDA
THE Styria hurried northward through a dull night of sickening heat. Mount Sinai had been passed in indistinguishable darkness; and now, in the cloudy dawn, the first gleam of the swift dayspring showed only the North African littoral, sunken and gray. What little air stirred, as the ship shot on, was hot and poisoned as the breath of a beast. Mothers prayed for the whisper of the Canal’s water at the keel, the ship’s slower motion in greater coolness, the perfect concave of illimitable blue above the tawny stretches of Egyptian desert.
Bruce Walden’s mind was occupied thus early in the day with the same question that had beset it late on the previous evening: he was wondering, with the impetus to speculation that is born of great desire, if Pell Wall, his
senior commissioner, would meet him at Port Said. He, Walden, was a budding personage to have been appointed to the Benadir Boundary Commission, and Wall was a full-fledged authority in the world of foreign affairs to serve on equal terms with him. Wall had the excuse of illness if he wished to be late at the tryst, and the thought of this was unnerving, for Walden wanted to get home; he was sick of the yellow sands and the yellow men. The desire to surrender his papers and get to his people grew on him until, as he stood in the main street of Port Said, it had become a dull, aching nostalgia. Wall had not been with him in Benadir; the) had never met; and a horror lest he prove a red-tape, documentary, foreign-office none-such grew into a nervous certainty that this was his type.
Copyright, 1909, by The S. S. McClure Co. All rights reserved
229
[pgbrk] 230
OUTPOSTS OF EMPIRE
Nubians, in Indian file, diverted him, passing before him like silhouettes of real men, done in black velvet, their broad feet slapping the dirty street with a vigorous rhythm, while they chanted a marching melody, singing it in Swahili, with a strong tone and ventral grunts of emphasis. He liked the sense of what they sang; its spirit was new to him: "0 white masters, put much weight on black shoulders, for they are able to carry much weight. Our fathers carried ivory and were whipped for it, but we bear only the tin trunks of travelers for money and the words of brothers. O white masters,” etc. The quality of that negro chorus sounded with a peculiar glory in the wind-swept glare of an August noon, soothing him as a thing completely satisfactory alone can soothe. But even perfect sound was instantly forgotten as he examined the luggage on the porters’ heads. “P. W.” was stamped on each ant-proof tin box, and on a small Vickery shirt-case “ Revolesholm”—the name of Wall’s Kentish place — was also stenciled.
Ihe other commissioner’s arriving,” he thought cheerfully.
The seventh Nubian passed him, and then a litter, borne by two Somalis and a brace of fellaheen. Its canvas sides were furled, and one might thus see clearly who lay within it. A
huge Englishman reclined there with t ie or-oughness peculiar to his nation when reposing on the strength of blacks or Indians. His face was of eupeptic, British beauty, and his hair glittered with the brightness of England s gilded youth. The knitted blanket that covered him was a strange sight in Port Said, and as much as could be seen of his linen tunic announced Bond Street with a heavy emphasis. He was typically clean and kind and sensible — a Frenchman would have said as much of him, while unwilling to concede his race to be the handsomest in existence, or that the blond, normal, traveled school-boys that race sends forth muddle their ways to the forefront of civilization and beyond it — to the lonely graves of heroes and the sacred places of a nation’s heart.
Walden followed at a respectful distance; turning a sharp corner, he watched the long train halt before the hotel, and a white-robed Tunisian minister to the man within the litter. He helped him out and hovered about him, statuesque, competent, offering long arms for his support as they moved up the steps into the veranda.
“Wall looks seedy,” Walden thought with pity. Hurrying on, he stood before him. “I’m Walden,” lie proclaimed rather breathlessly; “can 1 be of any service?”
"'O WHITE MASTERS, PUT MUCH WEIGHT ON BLACK SHOULDERS’ THEY SANG ”
[pgbrk] “ LOOKING TO SEE WHERE THE BLADE HAD LANDED, HE FOUND IT TRANSFIXING
A LONG, BROWN HAND”
[pgbrk] “‘THE GOVERNOR’S NAME IS PELL WALL,' WAS THE MESSAGE”
“At half after four you can,” Wall replied rather faintly. “I’m awfully glad to see you, you know, but I’m just about done: postenteric leg — can’t dance round dances for a bit; it’s a horrid fag, but I’m really better. Come at half after four, with the maps, to my room.” “Won’t you have a doctor or some one to look after you?”
Wall glanced at the bronze statue upon which he leaned with a look of vivid affection. “This old savage, M’barak, does me very well indeed,” he replied.
The Tunisian saluted with his free hand, and the blond man and the black moved slowly into the hotel together.
At half after four the sun lay more lightly along the streets, and many carriages went to and fro, passing verandas crowded with “every kindred, every tribe, on this terrestrial ball." Walden knocked very punctually at the door pointed out to him by the Goanese lift operator. A sleepy voice cried, “Karib” (draw near).
Wall was lying wrapped in many blankets and propped by many pillows, shivering a little and showing the ravages of illness a great deal. A huge deal table had been shoved to the edge of his bed and was piled with an orderly aggre-
gation of maps and papers and little piles of sovereigns, uniform in height; evidently ready for paying off his men when they should emerge from quarantine.
Behind the table and from the bed’s edge to a distance of five feet or less, a rough red curtain, dusty and heavy, screened what might have been a cupboard or the entrance to an adjoining room. The table itself was pushed close against it.
Wall’s eyes were inexpressibly tired and looked as if sleep were exiled from them. Walden wondered as he looked at him if his appearance expressed illness or energy more forcibly. He was opening letters with a supple Damascene knife, pointed and mischievous.
He at once inspected the commissioner’s maps, comparing his own of three years before. He was brief, courteous, and illuminating, and the commission’s work for the Empire was finished before dark.
It was then that they fell to talking, recounting peculiarities in the three grades of humanity, and differences in the black, beige, and Caucasian white.
“Walden,” Wall said solemnly, in his husky voice, “don’t take this old East too seriously.
232
[pgbrk] "HE TOOK A PENCIL AND WROTE ON THE STAINED WALL”
[pgbrk] 534 OUTPOSTS OF EMPIRE
Don’t be like the home people, for we’ve no business to expect the deportment of statesmen from the guests at a children’s party, or human standards among beasts. Remember that Orientals have been under the influence of one or two strong ideas for centuries, but we chaps who rule ’em are under the influence of an idea only until it is corrected by experiment or controverted by discovery, or ”
His fellow commissioner was fascinated, listening to his opinions gravely, under the spell of his capacity for work, his clarity of mind and gift of expression. From the depths of his meditation he saw the little knife fly up in the air, watching it as impersonally as one watches a trick at a show.
And looking — always casually — to see where the blade had landed, he found it transfixing a long, brown hand, whose fingers had been tending stealthily toward the piles of gold on the table.
“M’barak,” Wall said suavely, “your father sees your heart as through a pane of glass. This sort of stealing is too hard for you. Myself, I saw into your heart this morning and saw the birth of crime there. I say, Walden, draw the curtains, please.”
The whole Tunisian then stood revealed, his impaled hand motionless, but the rest of him writhing with shame. The blade of the slim knife was inch deep in the table. Behind him — for background — was an empty room.
II
Walden left Port Said that night, and three weeks later a paragraph in the London Times and a letter shown to him in the Foreign Office itself told all that was to be told of M’barak’s shamelessness and protracted deceit. His had been the career of no common servant. He had been paid tribute by every one who had worked for Wall in Egypt, and had been found to have stolen and spied where he had seemed most honest and incurious. All items relating to him were thenceforth gathered in an envelop marked: “M’barak, factional leader of Mapala (S. E. Soudan), Islamic agitator of unusual influence and cunning.”
Walden met Mrs. Wall one afternoon at an administrative tea-fight, where she attacked the question at once. “Never again,” she cried, “does Pell go East without me. He loved M’barak,— I have pages to show he did,— and he was terribly deceived in him. It needs a woman to read human nature, Mr. Walden, especially human nature of the servant world.”
Walden nodded. “Wall’s a fearfully effi-
cient chap,” he said seriously, "but M’barak is a big man. He’s a Mullah of sorts, is M barak, and an m’towa (holy man).”
Mrs. Wall looked at the young man with pity. She had small faith in native African greatness. “His destiny is hysteria,” she said, “and his pastime infamy. I know him. If they make Pell Governor, of Mapala I shall think that commission his death warrant.”
Walden cried, “I’ll ask for his assistant’s billet to-morrow.”
“The great pity,” Mrs. Walden concluded, just before a solid mass of befeathered ladies separated them, “is that M’barak got away at Port Said. If only one man in the whole of Pell’s department had had an idea that he wasn’t straight, or if he had been pursued ”
“Pursued?” Walden cried hotly. “I was there. He drew out the knife and flung it at me. I dodged and rushed for him, but he had melted into the emptiness of a hall bedroom. He was nowhere.”
Walden’s views of M’barak’s importance were justified when, within a fortnight, the Tunisian began to get into the papers. He had been hiring dervishes by the hundred on a contract which called for continuous jumping in return for unlimited bang; for, at some point in the increasing contact of India with the African, the holy men of the littoral and hinterland had learned to smoke the “sleeping magic,” and one might have seen them jumping drowsily,— but ever jumping,— their heads heavy and to one side, and their dull eyes full of a vagueness of dreams. The blacks pursang did otherwise in religious observance, adding beehive brandy to their motions and reverting to their more unpleasant racial customs; feeling, for instance, compelled not to let the bodies of their slain enemies go to waste.
Then M’barak told them of Allah’s greatness, while deeply convinced of his own, and sent fojth runners to call in the faithful, while the jumpers continued their exercises and the washen^i cleaned guns and sharpened spears and knives, until one day a Kavirondo boy ran into the district; he was as modestly naked as a tree-trunk, and was employed to deliver telegrams.
“ Yuko chitti ya Sim,” he said, which means, “Here’s a letter in the manner of Mr. Sim”— who was, by the by, the man who laid the East African cable.
“Where?” M’barak cried. He had received and despatched many telegrams, although, having previously dwelt in the north, he had never seen a Kavirondo; but he reasoned that naked savages having no coats upon their backs are likely to have no pockets.
[pgbrk] ELEANOR STUART
235
The runner raised his arm, interrogated a gash in the flesh below his shoulder on the arm’s inner surface, and produced from it a telegram, wrapped in a segment of dried palm leaf. Then he sat down on a stone, awaiting the news with the insatiable curiosity of his kind.
The holy man read the telegram solemnly: “The governor’s name is Pell Wall,” was the message. He folded the white paper in silence, putting it away in a bag of rubber-cloth. Then he leaped from the ground to whirl in the arms of a revolving dervish, and when he withdrew from the ranks of the holy men he mounted upon a box of kerosene oil and addressed his people, suddenly motionless. A light wind, passing north over the ranks of his followers, reeked with the bouquet d’Ajrique.
“Allah,” he proclaimed, with the searching resonance of a bugle, “has put the fiercest of blasphemers within the grip of his servant. O holy men, know ye me for the Prophet’s vengeance, the fighting father of sons who make war. This Pelwalli sins even when he sleeps, and when he thinks, the faithful detect evil odors at a great distance from him; yes, even when his rest is in the land of the Franks who bred him, a stench creeps in our houses, and to the very doors of our mosques. His thoughts then are of us, Ismali ya Mohammed ya Ali."
The tidings first read by M’barak were then cried by his friends to those too far away to have caught them at first hand. At evening a thin stream of black men crawled from the Bara (hinterland) slowly, like oozing treacle. Night flung out her confused banners of tropic stars above them as they sat in circles within the fence of fire which excluded other beasts. They had wayfared fasting, for the month of Ramazan was upon them, in which they might eat only by night. They clutched their meat with the ugly rapacity of carnivora. Repletion made them over into manhood, so that they desired talk, even before sleep. A sound of the river rippling through papyri swamps and thickets of calla lilies turned their talk to riverways and desert water-holes. A subtle fighter instructed them in poisons for outrageous arrows and such spears as were used in Somaliland’s deistic delirium. Then M’barak rose again, and, after further description of the odors of the thoughts of Wall, dwelt on the northern Mullah’s warfare against such as he. Before they slept a voice broke from the darkness like a thunder-crack. "Shinja,” roared the mighty voice, and shinja means “kill.”
Upon the day of this telegram’s date Mr. and Mrs. Wall and Bruce Walden started from Dover Pier for Mapala.
Ill
Walden’s relief at being allowed to serve his country in the capacity of his choice was very great. He had wanted to have a part in the hunt after M’barak; and, that he might do his very best, sought information about him from the French in Tunis, from consuls and merchants, missionaries and hospital women. M’barak had been born in Tunis, but, having gone as a personal servant with an English explorer to Mapala, he had impressed that district with his fitness as a leader, and — as Walden admitted sadly—“the beast had charm.”
Mrs. Wall was one of those women who exist to quote their husband’s sayings and laud his deeds, and this was visible after they left Cairo and journeyed toward the south.
Everything that was distinctly a sight to be seen was pointed out to Mrs. Wall by Ferruzi, their guide, with whom she had begun friendly intercourse. His eyes were honest and his hands piebald, for he had suffered from a disease which destroys the pigment in black skins; his arms and chest were gay with white spots, of which he spoke gratefully and with simple pride. He apologized for the bouquet d’Af-rique on board the Harakar (the “Hurry”), their river steamer, and switched away the house-flies which settled on cheek and brow with a wet persistence; sometimes four or five of them would land together, and return after successive warnings to the exact places that they had lately quitted in fear of their lives. They blackened the eyes of little children, no higher than the water-pots, at lonely river stations, steeped in sun and bright in colored tatters. Sometimes a social group of flies upon the forehead buzzed confidence to others in the ear cavity; and when darkness hid European faces, these strange plagues of Egypt still communicated with one another in a maddening hum. A French lady, hirsute and sentimental, loudly retailed psychic experiences to her Eurasian maid. They were going to Fashoda to visit her son, a naturalist, to whom she was taking tablets of Metchni-koff’s lactobacilline.
They arrived at Tour de Lesseps, the last point whither anything but their own feet could take them, and disembarked, too weary to notice the ugly town or to have aught but perfunctory speech with its inhabitants.
They were glad to set off on the last stage of the trip — their walk to Mapala. The sun touched the leaves and tufts of bunch-grass with a light of such intensity that it seemed white, and above the black and sandy soil, where mica specks glittered intolerably, the still,
[pgbrk] 236 OUTPOSTS OF EMPIRE
brilliant glare pulsed, sometimes with a vibrating vividness. A vulture held off in the blazing blue, the only relief afforded to the human eye.
Arrived at Mapalala, the district’s capital, life suddenly became a confused outpouring of opportunity for Walden. While Wall gave himself up to a projected railway and a dam to be built, and followed up the strategy which had apparently given its quietus to M’barak’s rebellion, he studied the question of communication between the river cities of the province and Mapala itself.
The son of the old lady with the lactobacilline tablets had installed telephones in his district which had worked well, and these would be of priceless benefit between Guduru and Tour de Lesseps. The river is narrow and swift at Guduru, and the caravans use flat-bottomed wherries as a necessary link in their progress to the marts of the world. The power to halt commerce is a diplomatic point worth bloodshed, and Guduru with a telephone was many times stronger than Guduru without one; moreover, the prestige alone of such an installation would be very great in this world of deistic furies and fanatic chaos, and the sense of surveillance would imperil native courage. To be able to prevent merchants from crossing the stream without paying the caravan tax would be an almost millennial mitigation of upland commerce, and if the tax could be collected, the salary for a resident white official would be already arranged. The advent of caravans could be telephoned to Tour de Lesseps in the interim, and the tax imposed without cheating. All this knowledge came to Walden in a day, and at the next mail he wrote urgent letters to the French amateur of telephones, who at last consented to leave Fashoda and install a wire between the two towns, declining any pay except for materials and native helpers. He sent photographs of switchboards and scared natives receiving their first message, but declined to undertake the wild walk to Mapala, and neither Wall nor Walden could be spared to speed him on his leave.
The very fact that Wall’s administration had achieved a telephone inclined the hearts of the Colonial Office to his railway, so that upon a frightful August morning, with the southwest monsoon languishing two months before its time to die, the Kavirondo telegraph runner sprinted toward the Governor’s office; and, from the old slit under his shoulder, he produced a summons to Cairo in December to consider the feasibility of sixty miles of rail. This was the net result of eleven months of administration.
For an instant Walden wondered why his chief had been commanded by wire for a date so distant, but that reverence ever at the heart of real officials assured him that the ways of the “Home End” of foreign administration are past finding out.
They heard but little of M’barak. His jumping and knife-sharpening had eventuated in abortive revolt; eleven Arabs, two Nubians, and a few Goanese government clerks were killed, but the worst feature of the whole disturbance was his own escape and unguessed hiding-place. The mere fact of escape, despite English and French vigilance (and exhaustive German criticism), argued — to the native mind — that the Mullah was indeed m’towa, or the very holy person he claimed to be. The Arabs and natives said alike, in the irritating tone of finality so usual to superstition, “Allah is resting his holy son in a sleep peopled with dear dreams of many women, much gold, and loud praise from the faithful.” The nine European residents of Mapalala, on the other hand, observed quite as inevitably that they “couldn’t see that these niggers got a thing for all the fuss they made.”
Mrs. Wall, although she lived within the one European house in many miles, had faded from Walden’s consciousness by reason of his absorption in the problem of the wilderness and how to couple it with London’s will and dictum. She sat sewing on the veranda, she wrote letters, she walked abroad with Ferruzi; but all Walden could have told the world of her was that the walk in from the river had nearly killed her with fatigue. One day she ran to Walden with a little book. “See,” she said, “one of the many natives in the market gave me this for a present.”
Walden opened it, and saw his own name neatly written midway a ruled page. It was a faithful transcript in very doubtful Arabic of all that Wall and Walden had done and meant to do in Mapala. Their letters were copied verbatim, and such telegrams as had been received at Tour de Lesseps for forwarding were all set down faithfully. Various small items were entered with a terrible accuracy: “Came flannel shirts to-day from Bennis and Better-dean, six for the great master, six for the little master; came also singlets and 2 bottles Elli-man’s Embrocation, to rub over a white man’s cough in the rains. Came also a mother’s letter and pills with no name on the box.”
Walden went with a heavy heart to his chief. “No one can find M’barak,” he said solemnly, “but this smells like his track, my dear sleuth.” He read him the entries, while Wall’s face fell also.
[pgbrk] ELEANOR STUART
237
“Looks like we’re chaperoned,” he said; “but perhaps they have done it to scare us.”
“No fear,” Walden answered. His heart was lead within him, and nightly he moved a great almirah (Indian highboy) against his door and prayed against the powers of darkness of whom M’barak was the chief.
Happily something new existed for Walden now, as a joy to be anticipated — that vague meeting of men in Cairo to consider a railway in a land they had never visited, upon the representation of a person whom they had never met. The scheme had become an obsession with Wall; his mind could not evade it; it soothed him in the aggravation of sweltering nights and inspired him with a double energy at a reviving fall of temperature. In his great hope for a Mapala peaceful and industrially occupied lay his own hope of distinction. The idea lived with him by day and flared in his mind by night in a thousand dreams of commerce and the blacks at useful toil. He longed to trap M’barak, for he needed to safeguard his enterprise by catching him; but the weary marches he made were all to places the Mullah had just quitted, as, ever elusive, he passed from side to side of the province like a shuttle, weaving dissatisfaction in the vivid patterns of Oriental lying. Wall learned that he himself was a cannibal, and had once sold government arms to natives in Uganda, and had bought and sold beauty while in Persia for a Turkish Hareem Syndicate; the idea of a syndicate to supply hareems was M’barak’s own, and both Wall and Walden liked it tremendously. But always, in the last analysis, these stories were found to emanate from the truculent, imaginative Arab, the very mouthpiece of confusion.
The day at last came when the Governor set his face toward home, after all the exertions of making over the headship of the province to a substitute. Mr. and Mrs. Wall were spent and white as they took the home trail, but at the end of the second day’s walk the river valley was in sight, and the Arab trader’s house in Tour de Lesseps showed in a faint cube of white, as the sun dropped from that far comer of the world. The porters sang as they built the fires, themselves afire with the joy of seeing the little steamer again and spending their money in riotous living as afforded by Tour de Lesseps. “O white masters,” Ferruzi sang, “put your weight on black shoulders, for they are able to carry much weight.”
The walls of empurpled night surrounding them fell down like those of Jericho, and in their stead Walden saw the glare of Port Said, and felt again the breeze from home. He hated the vision, but it grew upon his sight and faded
again with a deliberate gradation he could not hasten. Superstitions, presentiments, nameless ideas of coming need, made him miserable. “Ferruzi,” he said gently, “for the memory of Mohammed and the holy mind of Ali, stop that song. I heard it first the day 1 met M’barak -----”
"To speak his name is also an evil omen,” Ferruzi answered, and was silent for the rest of the night.
IV
Their descent to the town next morning was a happy scramble. A Khojah, trading about for ivory, explained the eccentricities of the river. Above Tour de Lesseps the water rarely failed to be deep enough for travel, but even now it was falling fast on the way to Egypt. “This is the last trip until the rivers rise again,” the Indian said. The telephone was inspected, its French donor praised, and Mrs. Wall conceived the happy idea of erecting a Metchoikoff tablet to commemorate his generosity. They all played about the seven huts and the concrete landing like happy little children, and in the afternoon the faint puffing of the Harakar was heard round a bend in the river.
Her gasping grew louder until it seemed to shake the stagnant silence of the humid river town, as the excitement of its arrival stirred its savage hearts. The busy French doctor was the man of the moment, bedecked as quarantine officer, and firm in the dear privilege of boarding her for medical inspection before all others. Before anything of the little craft itself was seen, a bit of the yellow of her quarantine signal showed above a disconsolate group of baobabs.
A clamor rose from black throats, and the men cheered with their ready enthusiasm like mad things, dancing in circles, drunk with excitement, wheeling and singing, and raising the dust in clouds from under their wide, flat feet. The doctor put off in a little native dugout, and they cheered him as he boarded the river steamer upstream. Then a great lull came, for the Harakar had anchored so far from the town that not a face could be distinguished among those who traveled on her.
The inspection seemed endless, but at last the doctor appeared on the deck, holding a megaphone in one hand and a sheaf of quarantine papers in the other. He raised the megaphone reluctantly to his mouth before he shouted, "Plague.”
Wall nodded, guessing that the Sikhs who had been sent to the south of Mapala had come down with it after embarking on the home trip to India, for he had had news that some of those left behind had succumbed. He cursed M’ba-
[pgbrk] 238
OUTPOSTS OF EMPIRE
rak, whose rebellion had made the borrowed Sikhs a necessity, for the plague on board the Harakar was a heavy blow. Looking at his wife, he saw tears on her eyelashes, and when she looked at him his eyes were fixed in another direction.
The few merchants evidently feared to ship by an infected steamer, and began to move their cargo from the concrete incline to the square Arab house again, while the natives did their bidding with scared and rolling eyes, declaring sickness to be God’s will and themselves his servants. After more delay, the doctor rowed along the shore to the landing-place. "Monsieur Wall,” he called, again through his megaphone.
The commissioner hurried to him, and they talked together until a new moon showed golden in the darkening alien sky, against which the doctor was also observable, gesticulating his despair. He at last yielded some point which Wall -had urged with few words, but with persistency, and turned the dugout upstream again to the tragic quarantine. Wide wings flapped above the town as a few enterprising vultures entered it.
Mrs. Wall rushed to her husband, and Walden followed her; but she felt suddenly that vehemence was useless in the face of silence such as his. His set quiet had the quality of despair in it, the bitterness of defeat. He spoke slowly:
“They’ve lost sixteen men — ten Indians — of plague, since they started downstream, and this will be the last river trip for three months — the Mapala River is drying out before the rains.
I am going on — in view of my errand I must; but I’ll not expose you to all this, Anna; no sane man would. But there’s the unexpected streak of good luck in it. Lady Alice White is at Guduru with her son, and is going to Entebbe, and then by rail to Mombasa and home by steamer. Walden and you must start for Guduru to-night, and we’ll meet in Egypt — soon.”
They made the arrangement their separation demanded, and the Indian gave them each sufficient money on their government paper.
Without words or any clamor of distress, three white-robed figures, late at night, took the trail to Guduru: Ferruzi, Walden, and Anna Wall.
A runner overtook them at two miles’ distance. He brought this note: “Telephone arrival from Guduru. You may get me before we’re off.”
Walden said he had been thinking of that, too. "We tested the wire while you were resting,” he said to Anna, “and I felt real pride
when I saw how well it worked here in darkest Mapala.”
Although the walk to Guduru was short, the country changed abruptly before the guides announced the town, and each step they took in darkness led them farther up a steep incline. Ferruzi moved steadily on, showing them much of a dog’s love in his uncritical faithfulness, and much of a woman’s tenderness under the aloofness of an Arab dignity of manner. He pointed at things looming vague in the blackness of night and told them what they were, and bade them observe how cool the tonic wind was, and how tightly crimped the surface of a tiny lake, as the breezes crossed it under a moon fast declining. The acacias gave out a peculiar tunefulness as the breeze stiffened, and the far forest of m’vuli seemed symphonically resonant; the whole primeval world of the Bara was full of a moving and elusive music. The hot quiet of Mapalala and Tour de Lesseps was gone, and Walden explained that they were on the level of the Inland Tableland and in the track of the monsoon, asweep over the Great Nyanza. They slept under many blankets, and rose again while it was still very dark.
Ferruzi had made his coffee on the fires of his sentry-line, and its heat was grateful in that chill of equatorial altitude. The first livid streak of dawn showed them that the town was directly above their resting-place, within a stockade; the place was Masai* to the most casual observer: the three kraals or maneattas (for bachelors) were recognizable even to those who had only read about the African hinterland in the handbooks of the German steamers; and another evidence to the travelers was a stronger, separate stockade for penning cattle, to the right of the town itself.
Ferruzi stood out in the growing light of day and called a greeting in the few words of Masai he could speak. A tiny wattle door opened in the high fence, and a host of thin-limbed, curious, but unquestioning natives swarmed out like ants whose nests have been assailed.
Lady Alice White and her son had left Guduru for Entebbe, but this was in no sense alarming, for Ferruzi knew the trail, and food was plenty. Walden intended resting Mrs. Wall for two days and pushing on rather briskly to a semi-civilized town. She asked for the telephone, and was told through Ferruzi as interpreter that there was none.
“ I spoke to Guduru myself yesterday,” Walden declared angrily. "Who’s head man in the village?”
From out of the silence about them the name
* A peculiarly interesting and implacable tribe of Semitic-looking negroes, who are usually found near Nairobi, but who have wandered of late years as cattle-raisers.
[pgbrk] ELEANOR STUART
239
"Natiki” broke from twenty throats, not as a shout, but as a statement, with the addition of hai yuko (he is not here).
Ferruzi came forward and whispered, "Their speech-tape’’ (telephone) “has broken — so they say. B’wana, but I think they hide it because M’barak says the work of Europe is accursed.”
Walden determined on a search when Natiki should have returned from a distant village and could be held responsible.
The day dragged on, and the strong wind again hummed past them, piling great clouds in heroic groups to honor the sun’s passing from the African world. While Mrs. Wall still slept, and in the early gleam of day’s reappearance, Walden saw Ferruzi step out from the stillness of men asleep, with the stealth of a beast that hunts in the "border hours.” Walden felt a sudden grief that he should wish to leave them, even for a day, but his was a reasonable request —- a day’s hunting.
The afternoon went slowly away under the unending, inarticulate surveillance of the people of Guduru. Walden made tea at four o’clock, near a low, square building of solid masonry at the side of the river. It had been built to accommodate hunters, as a storehouse for ivory, and it had slits for windows not unlike those of a medieval fortress. Mrs. Wall joined him, and they watched a caravan ford the Guduru River where the water was unusually low.
"Odd, about that telephone,” she said.
"It’s perfect nonsense,” Walden answered wearily, "but I can’t see why they should lie about it, unless some one has hidden it away for his own ends. These niggers look to me like the type who fear such ‘work of Europe’ as telephones, and we spoke with this place ourselves yesterday. I’m sure of that, for Wall got the doctor on the wire, who was hurrying out with the last of Lady Alice White’s caravan. They may have broken it and been afraid to tell where it is because we should find it damaged; but perhaps Ferruzi’s right: they may have waited until we arrived and inspected it, and then, believing our backs turned, broken it.”
An Arab had approached them quietly, and stood watching the last of the caravan as they took the trail with much groaning under their shifted packs.
“Hot work,” Walden said to the stranger, kindly. There was something familiar to him in the dignity of his acquiescence, in his gait as he moved, key in hand, to the door of the little white building. They moved after him to see what the place contained, and a damp smell
spread outward through the open door, and marks of the river’s height after the rains were lined in green on the walls.
"It’s an odd thing,” Walden continued to Mrs. Wall, as they passed in at the gaping doorway, "how all these Arabs look alike. This fellow looks so like a horde of his kind that at first I thought I’d seen him before.”
She assented, and asked him to look at the native-made lock on the door, itself a solid piece of m’vuli wood, chiseled from a giant tree-trunk and polished with "bull grease.” "That lock,” the Arab ventured in Swahili, “is no good; it wouldn’t keep that door fast if the men here weren’t afraid of me. I must get a new one when I go to Tour de Lesseps.”
Walden examined it carefully. “It seems a strong lock,” he said idly.
The Arab carried a tusk of ivory into the doorway, stooping to examine its tip; then he pushed it beyond the threshold with his foot, catching the door with his hand as if to steady himself. Walden rushed at him, but the door had closed, and the great key had turned smoothly in its well-oiled tread. By the time Mrs. Wall appreciated that the door was fast, the key had already been withdrawn.
' "White master, I am M’barak,” came softly through the keyhole from the outside world.
V
For the next six hours Walden worked at the lock with passion, while Mrs. Wall sat by, silent, but still mistress of the blind bravery which forbade outcry or tears. He was using her hat-pins as tools for their deliverance, striving wildly to pick the lock with them, and often shouting through the loopholes which gave on the river, frantic with distress, unable to blame himself, but equally unable to help the situation; tricked, trapped, desperate.
Night came, and the walls of their prison exuded a greater chill than before; rats scuttled madly about, and before the light quite failed them they saw the bats leave the beams from which they hung by day and flutter through the loopholes to circle about in the swiftly passing twilight. When he lit a match,— all told, he had but nine in his match-case,— he saw Mrs. Wall praying in a far corner. A brace of lizards were skimming the surface of her linen coat, and her face was pitiful and hopeless. "It will be easier for her if she dies first,” he thought.
He spread out his coat for Mrs. Wall, and led her in the darkness to lie down on it. Then he retreated to the far side of the go-down, and lived his life over from its early days to the
[pgbrk] 240
OUTPOSTS OF EMPIRE
moment M’barak trapped him — that peaceful, sunny moment, with the ripple of the river flowing through it and the seeming peace of a great treachery veneering its rottenness. He dared not think of Wall; he could but pray for him, in the fumbling fashion of a man unused to prayer; nor could he think of Wall's wife with calmness, and the only prayer he prayed for himself was that she might not go mad and rave before the end. He thought of her little boy, to whom this agony would be a mere romance. ‘‘The Empire asks nothing of us when it merely demands death in battle," he concluded. So many bullets had missed him to preserve him for future death in a damp Arab storehouse, with a hopeless gentlewoman’s fate about his neck. He lit another match, and saw a crocodile’s length through the wide cracks in the boarding over the river’s edge. Then he slept, and full day broke over him before he woke again, to find the bats inactive in their old places, and Mrs. Wall still sleeping on his coat. The reflection that breakfast was not forthcoming was a bitter one.
He waited with a breathless impatience for Mrs. Wall to wake, realizing the extent to which misery may love company, thinking of his mother with pity for the long days of pained wonder that would elapse before the final word of their end arrived in the Colonial Office. When Mrs. Wall’s eyes opened at last, she asked him if he had slept, and he answered, “Like a top, thank you,” with the sudden assumption of lying cheerfulness that he felt to be her due.
They chatted almost gaily of the way in which escape would come, until afternoon, when the pains of hunger made her faint — pains which gave place before night to the worse consciousness of thirst. But Walden was possessed of a sudden inspiration. His handkerchief was clean and white, and he lay his whole length to dip it between the boards into the shallows of the retreating river, after which Mrs. Wall sucked it gratefully and revived. It was after this that Walden reached the sacrificial limit of his spiritual career: he had' but three cigarettes, and he offered one of them to Mrs. Wall, who accepted it gratefully. The bats got away at their usual hour, and the lizards slid about like jewels in the deepening dusk, the crocodile pushed itself into the bed it had occupied the night before, and night shut down on them, swift and close as a box-lid. “ Dear baby!” Mrs. Wall exclaimed softly, just before she slept. She was thinking of her boy, just as Walden had known she would.
Then Walden found tears on his cheeks for the first time in many years. He wished for the gift of sleep with all his soul, but it was
denied him, and he dared not smoke one of his two cigarettes when he reflected that they were all that was left of comfort to the poor woman who was walking abreast of him through the martyr’s gate to they knew not what degree of consciousness or oblivion. Some commentary of the old Fathers, read in his university days, returned to his mind now, in which the martyr’s gate was said to be the road by which souls were compelled to enter heaven, who had declined to gain Paradise by the other paths of good works or a pure spirit. He thought of Livingstone, and recalled Shorthouse’s “Sir Percival”—all the thoughts of African deaths, which had remained but a second and separately in his mind heretofore, hurled themselves in a massed attack upon him now. He wet his handkerchief and sucked it in an agony of thirst, and as Mrs. Wall’s eyes opened he had it wet again for her.
“Your tea, please, madam,” he said playfully, imitating a maid at home.
Her eyes filled with tears, and he saw that he had done the wrong thing; in recalling the faraway comforts, he had conjured up from the depths of their present suffering a score of dearer things. Her eyes rebuked him with meek weeping; he kissed her hand and turned from her. Time seemed ripe for the second cigarette, and he yielded it cheerfully, but sat close to catch the smoke.
“Brother Bruce,” she said lightly, "I’m rather a beast, I fancy. Turn and turn about.” She looked at his altered face with a shocked glance, although his growing beard hid from her sight the drawn look of privation which was so apparent in her face to his eyes. Her weakness made her sleepy, and in the early afternoon she closed her eyes again with a little unexpected sob.
Walden had called dutifully every day for twenty minutes at a time, consulting his watch and shrieking with the consistency and method that marked what he did in all circumstances. But on the fifth day his voice left him, and Mrs. Wall seemed scarcely able to rouse herself from a sleep that enveloped her senses. The water was fast drying in the river-bed, and the crocodile had moved his resting-place at least four feet during the five days of their confinement, to be ever within plunge of the cover the water afforded him in case of attack. Toward morning on the fifth day a lion purred so near the grim little prison that the noise of it seemed to vibrate in the foul and narrow space. The old hunter’s instinct gave some transient stimulus to Walden’s fainting powers. With an agility fearfully impaired by weakness, he raised himself to a place in the window and sat
[pgbrk] ELEANOR STUART
241
looking out through the narrow slit which showed him a world in which he had lost his place, a land that should know him no more. The lion had cowered to cover, and the day sent a few cheerless gleams to the surface of the receding river; the almond trees were red, and the acacias had bloomed in bewildering masses of chrome-yellow. He gave Mrs. Wall as much water as she would take, and once more resumed his post as lookout. Neither of them cared for the last cigarette; their sufferings had progressed beyond the power of its comfort.
At five o’clock Walden was lost in a curious speculation. He knew that the next day would find them with all the water gone from under the house, and he looked upon this as God’s mercy, and as the one thing that would end their lives for this world with a tolerable swiftness. He gave Mrs. Wall the dripping handkerchief faithfully, but she was now too weak and wandering to realize where she was. He began to turn over some boards and laths lying in the corner. There was a rifle at the very bottom of all the waste, a weapon of obsolete fashion, probably stolen or bought from an expedition as old as Mr. Chanler’s. The habit of musing on wild beasts and weapons is strong even in the death of hunters, and he held the thing in his hands, speculating as to whence and how it had reached, and survived in, Guduru. It had been recently used and was loaded. He thanked God for it with solemnity. “When she is gone, I need not wait,” he said aloud.
He dragged a heavy board to the window, and found strength to lift it so that it rested on two projecting shelf-like beams or boriti which protruded from the walls of masonry. He sank on the floor after the effort, wondering if he should ever, there or thereafter, have strength to mount to his coign of vantage, too lately planned. From far down the river a new sound shook the silence, the short and heavy breathing of some craft whose life was steam.
It was a battle call, a summons to the last stand against the forces of night and darkness. Blundering and sick, he raised himself with more than physical effort, with all the force of nerve and will remaining in him, and attempted to climb, gaining the rough board with a humming in his ears and the desire to be gone from the world swiftly.
He listened, and the sound of the boat told him that it was nearer; he looked, and through the fringe-like border of acacias he saw a slab of moving white, sweeping rapidly to round the point of land opposite the hated town itself. The noise grew louder, although he had lost
sight of the craft. He fried to cry out, but all his powers of speech were gone; he felt himself slipping from his own control, and wrung his hands while he gibbered in his effort to make some sound.
The disturbed waters rolled in a wave before the oncoming steamer and rushed under the house, surging up between the planks before it came at last into view. Harakar was painted on its sides, and on the deck, no farther than a few yards away, Wall sat gazing out on the land, with Ferruzi behind him. His face was a menace, his eyes were anguished, and his eager hands gripped the rail. Again Walden could make no sound. He raised his rifle and fired, falling from his place aloft to the wet planks below. As he lay there, the water surged up again and covered him for one moment of deep refreshment. When he was able to look out from the narrow window again, he found that the Harakar had reversed her engines, backing to the wider channel round the point. Presently he saw her again through the foliage, returning the way she had come.
He looked at Mrs. Wall sleeping herself over the border; he looked above at the bats preparing for their activity at dusk; and in the darkness of this last and coming night he found a heavenly pity shining in his soul.
He put a match to one of the laths, and the sudden flare woke her.
“Somehow,” she declared faintly, “I would rather die like this than be murdered quickly.”
“It is early days to talk of dying,” he answered. “Do you care for this light?”
“Yes.”
“Are you in pain?”
“No.”
“Why do you whisper?” she asked suddenly.
“ I have caught a little cold,” he proclaimed cheerfully.
He wondered if his hair were white, wishing that he had a glass to see. The great suspense and trial had passed over him, leaving him trivial; he thought of all the things he liked to eat, and the night wore on in just the way the other nights had gone. The only difference he could see in this evening was that the steamer had come and gone at the time usually devoted to his observation of the lizards, and that he looked toward the dawn with no hope.
He looked up at the narrow window, and saw a part of the descent of a gibbous moon; he looked again, and it was gone. Day was coming, pulsing in wan lights that he had known the world over, the livid twilight preceding dawn.
“My last day,” he said slowly. He took a pencil and wrote on the stained wall, “Good-bye,
[pgbrk] 242
OUTPOSTS OF EMPIRE
mother. Bruce.” He looked at the sleeping woman, and wondered at her loss of flesh, before he wrote in another hand, beneath his own message, “Good-bye, dearest. Anna.”
"It will comfort the poor fellow,” he thought. The useless rifle lay at his feet. “I ought to have shot at the lock of that door,” he declared sadly.
He picked it up and went listlessly to the corner where he found it, to put it in its place again. “ I might have made better use of you,” he whispered to it gravely. Then he knelt. “May God forgive me,” he said.
A bell rang under his feet, sharply. His head swam, and he felt himself swaying. It was as if a wave had rolled over him, but when he emerged from the strange seizure the bell still rang. Stooping, he paused before he lifted the light plank which was looser than its fellows, because the day was shining in, in strips of light through the slits of windows. There was no hope in his heart as he kicked the plank away from him, but the noise of that bell had suggested a sound of London’s traffic, had brought to his memory a haunting harmony of home, one chord to finish the music of his life before the eternal silence.
A telephone-box was set in a little cement cavity beneath him. 11 was dusty, but not wet, and he could see that the wire came from across the river; before he answered it, he was looking for an excuse for not having seen the wires in the town.
He raised the receiver. “Are you there?” he whispered.
"Is this Guduru?”came to him in Wall’s voice.
As lightning shivers the night’s blackness, so a wild hope cleft the nerveless despair that held him.
He rushed to Mrs. Wall, shook her, dragged her, pushed her to the corner where the sun shone brightest. “Wall’s on this wire,” he hissed, “and I can’t answer him. For God’s sake, buck up — it’s now or never! The telephone’s here; it works — but they hid it — oh, hurry on, can’t you — rush, rush!”
Shaking, she squatted native fashion on the planks, while he pushed her toward the box, that she might speak into the mouthpiece.
“Pell, dear, we’re living, but dying, too, Pell. Hurry. Mr. Walden has been such a sport, but M’barak locked us up. Why didn’t you call us up before?”
She listened a long time, joy flaming in her pinched face. When she hung up the receiver, she staggered, as Walden tenderly replaced it. “After they locked us up, the Masai trekked toward Uganda somewhere; they were horribly scared,” she explained; “but the Sikhs caught them — three of them and M’barak. Pell’s going to hang him,” she finished confidentially. She took Walden’s watch from the pocket of his filthy tunic. “They can get here by two. They’re walking, because even here the river may go dry. Pell's at Tour de Lesseps; he couldn’t get north in the Harakar — no water.”
“He didn’t say he came here yesterday?” Walden asked timidly.
"No,” she declared, “he didn’t say, but the water’s failing even as far north as we are — the river’s six weeks early this year, Pell says.”
It was Ferruzi of Zanzibar who burst the bonds of their door of solid m’vuli wood, and his were the kindly piebald hands that gave them their first sips of essence of coffee and beef-juice; he had fled away for help to Tour de Lesseps, and his reward had come when the Harakar returned there, finding mud alone where her deepest river channels had been. The upper rivers south of Tour de Lesseps had never failed at this season since Ferruzi’s father had owned most of the cattle in Uganda, a parrot’s life ago.
Wall was shaken and tearful; he took his wife’s hand and read the writing on the wall with burning, boyish sobs.
“I had forgotten I wrote that,” Anna said to him long afterward, “but it was a nice idea, dear, wasn’t it?”
“You know, old Walden,” Wall said every time they talked over the Guduru adventure, “if you hadn’t fired that rifle, I should have made the landing and searched the town — and missed you. Of course, I thought when I heard your shot that it was M’barak and that he meant fight; and I knew that his first official act, when Guduru was on a war basis, would be to butcher you and Anna, so I put back as quickly and quietly as I could. When I got back to Tour de Lesseps, Ferruzi learned that M’barak had warned his men there not on any account to use the telephone. I got that out of him in time, and called up Guduru instantly. M’barak just missed it — he should have cut the wires.”
[pgbrk] GETTYSBURG: A BOY’S EXPERIENCE OF THE BATTLE
BY
ALBERTUS MCCREARY
ILLUSTRATIONS BY ROLLIN KIRBY
GETTYSBURG, Pennsylvania, as I knew it before the War, was a most peaceful little village, surrounded by fields and orchards, stretching in every direction to the distant hills; and peaceful it remained long after the War had begun.
Our only local excitement was the departure for the seat of war of a town company, the "Independent Blues,” in response to Lincoln’s call for soldiers. That was, as I well remember, a thrilling as well as a sad time. Almost every family had some member among them. My oldest brother marched away with the rest.
How grand they looked! and how eager we boys were to go with them! They were loaded with gifts from their friends, and, I remember, every man was provided with a Bible and woolen socks.
Some months before the battle came a number of scares, rumors of raids. One time when we were expecting a raid, and waiting in fear the coming of the Confederates, up the hill
marched a regiment of cavalry. It was just dusk, and they were fully among us before we discovered that they were our own men; and then such cheers as we gave! I remember how hoarse I became from yelling and singing. They camped in the town for the night; and as they rode away the next morning it was a glorious sight, for they were Custer’s men, and he was at their head. After him came the buglers. The soldiers wore blue shirts, wide turnover collars, and red neckties, knotted, with the ends flowing over their shoulders. They were equipped with short carbines, swords, and long lances with broad blades ten inches in length. These lances had long handles, the butt resting on the foot; near the blades were red streamers. The bugle notes, the rich coloring, and the glint of lances in the morning sunlight made me think of knights in stories and songs.
At last, after many false alarms, the raiders did arrive. They gathered in the center of the town in the open square and called for the town officials. The burgess and town council-
243
[pgbrk] 244
GETTYSBURG: A BOY’S EXPERIENCE
men responded. A demand was made upon them, by the officer in command, for seventy thousand dollars and several hundred barrels of flour and pork, with the threat that the town would be burned if the demand was not complied with. The burgess, after much parley, convinced the officer that it would be impossible to agree to their demands, since, having been warned of their coming, the citizens had removed their money and goods to places of safety. The raiders remained throughout the night, camping in the court-house and other buildings. By noon the next day they had all departed, without having done much damage. It had been very exasperating, however, to hear their band through the night playing “Dixie” and other Confederate airs; and they gave us a great scare, for shortly before Cham-bersburg had been burned during a similar raid.
Things had settled down to comparative quiet, when the papers informed us that Lee, with his whole army, was to invade the North. Next, we heard that our army was marching from the South. The farmers were worried by these reports, for their crops, many of them, were about ready to be gathered; not that any one even dreamed that a great battle would be fought near us, but every one feared the destruction of property from raiding parties, and such disturbances as naturally occur with the passing of an army.
The first indication I saw of the battle was the passing through town, along Washington Street, of parts of the Eleventh and Twelfth corps; they were going to form in line of battle along Seminary Ridge. We boys sat on the fence of High and Washington streets, full of excitement and wonder.
I remember saying to one of my companions, “There are enough soldiers here to whip all the ‘Rebs’ in the South.” To us it looked like a great army. It was hours before the last ones had passed.
Boy-like, we fol-
lowed in the rear, not dreaming that there was going to be actual fighting. We got as far as the Chambersburg Pike, and there we could hear firing over the Ridge. Afterward we learned that this was the actual beginning of the Battle of Gettysburg. General Reynolds held the advance-guard of the army and intercepted the Confederates at this point. He was killed at the beginning of the fight.
The firing seemed to be coming nearer and nearer, and at last shells began to plow through the line on Seminary Ridge. When one fell only a short distance from us and exploded, I concluded that I had better make for home; so I took a short cut through the alleys for my own door. Father was calm, and although some of the family begged him to take us out of town, he soon convinced us that we could not get away (the town was then surrounded by the armies) and were really safest where we were.
It was about noon, and we sat down to our dinner as usual; but before we were through there was so much noise and racket in the street that we all left the table and went to the doors to see just what was going on.
The street was full of Union soldiers, running and pushing each other, sweaty and black from powder and dust. They called to us for
“HANDING ME HIS DRUM, HE SAID, ‘KEEP THIS FOR ME ’ ’’
[pgbrk] ‘I ASKED HIM IF THAT WAS ALL HE HAD TO EAT ”
water. It was a hot July day. We got great buckets of water and tin dippers, and supplied them as fast as we could from the porch at the side of the house off the main street. Many were the hearty thanks we received. Hundreds thus got a refreshing drink as they fled in full retreat through the town.
While we were carrying water to the soldiers, a small drummer-boy ran up to the porch, and, handing me his drum, said, “ Keep this for me.” 1 took it, ran down the cellar steps, and hid it under a pile of shavings. His name and regiment were printed upon it in red letters. Later I wrote to him, but received no answer. I suppose he had been killed. He looked to be about twelve years old.
We were so busy, and the noise and confusion were so great, that we did not notice how close the fighting was, until, about half a block away, we saw hand-to-hand conflicts. It was a complete rout for the Union soldiers.
We kept right on distributing water until an officer rode his horse up on the pavement among the soldiers and said, “All you good people go down in your cellars or you will all
be killed.” We obeyed him at once. Several neighboring families had sought our house, for it was large and well built, with strong cellar walls of stone.
Hardly were we all down in the cellar, when we heard fighting all around the house, over the porch where a few moments before we had been handing out water, and over the cellar doors in the pavement. I heard a voice say, “Shoot that fellow going over the fence.” The order was obeyed, and a shot rang out just by the cellar window. There were several small windows in the walls, and their light cast shadows on the opposite wall, of men rushing back and forth; those shadows filled all of us with horror. There was more and more shooting, until the sound was one continuous racket. I peeped out of one of the windows just in time to see a cannon unlimbered and fired down the street. What a noise it made, and how the dust did fly!
After a time the noise grew less and less, and farther and farther away. We were all waiting to see what would happen next, when suddenly the outer cellar doors were pulled
245
[pgbrk] 246
GETTYSBURG: A BOY’S EXPERIENCE
open, and five Confederate soldiers jumped down among us. We thought our last day had come. Some of the women cried, while others, with hands clasped, stood rooted to the spot with fear. Father stepped forward and asked what they wanted and begged them not to harm his people.
One fellow — I can see him yet — with a red face covered with freckles, and very red hair, dirty and sweaty, with his gun in his hand, said, "We are looking for Union soldiers.”
“There are none here,” Father answered. But the soldier said he would have to search, and that we could go upstairs, as the danger was over for a time.
From that time on we had no fear of harm from individual soldiers. We all went upstairs, and the searchers found thirteen of our men hiding in all parts of the house, some under the beds, and one under the piano, and others in closets. The prisoners were brought into the dining-room, where the officer in charge took down their names.
I well remember my father as he said, "Gentlemen, won’t you have something to eat?”
The table was just as we had left it such a short time before. They were only too glad to accept the invitation. While all were eating, I went around and took down the names of the prisoners, telling them I would write to their friends. Now that they had stopped fighting, both sides seemed to be on the best of terms, and laughed and chatted like old comrades.
We did not have to take to the cellar again that day, and by nine o’clock it was comparatively quiet about our house, and as we were all worn out from our fears and excitement, we tried to get a little rest, although we did not remove our clothing or go regularly to bed.
From then until the end of the battle we were within the Confederate lines and knew nothing of the state of affairs outside, and were considerably alarmed by the reports given us by the Confederate soldiers. They told us of all sorts of disasters to the Union army. They said their men had taken Harrisburg, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and were nearing Washington, and that it was all up with us. Although we were confined to the house for the next two days, we only took to the cellar at intervals, when there was heavy cannonading. The vibrations could be felt, and the atmosphere was so full of smoke that we could taste saltpeter. One of our party was a deaf and dumb man, who, though he could not hear the firing, plainly felt the vibrations and could tell when the firing was heaviest as well as we. He would spell out on his fingers, “That was a heavy one.” The whizzing of the shells over-
head and the sharp snap of bullets through the trees in the yard kept us well keyed up.
Our house stood on the corner of Baltimore and High streets, and we did not dare to look out of the windows on the Baltimore Street side. Sharpshooters from Cemetery Hill were watching all the houses for Confederate sharpshooters and picking off every person they saw, since from that distance they could not distinguish citizen from soldier. On the High Street side we could stay out on the porch during the heavy artillery firing.
Along this street from east to west of the town was stretched a line of Confederate infantry in reserve. From time to time they were moved away, and others took their place.
I remember how poorly clad they were. Most of them were ragged and dirty, and they had very little to eat. I saw one man with a loaf of moldy bread and a canteen of molasses. He would break off a piece of bread, pour molasses over it, and eat it with what seemed great relish. I asked him if that was all he had to eat. He answered, “Yes, and glad to get it, too.” I had many talks with these men as they lay along the pavement and on the cellar doors. They were a sorry lot, poorly equipped and poorly fed. I saw one man passing the house on horseback, without shoes, and with spurs strapped to his bare heels. The officers seemed to be much better cared for.
Diagonally across from us, in the second story of our neighbor’s house, a Confederate general had his headquarters. 1 could see him seated at the window receiving the officers with despatches. If I remember rightly, it was General Ewell.
One day, while I was having a talk with the soldiers, I heard cheering down the street. It seemed to be caused by the passing along High Street, toward our house, of a small body of officers on horseback. As they drew near, the men along our pavement stood and cheered also. One of the men told me it was General Lee and his staff. I had a good look at him as he passed. He looked very much the soldier, sitting very erect in his saddle, with his short-cropped beard and his Confederate gray. The whole staff were a fine-looking set of men — at least, they seemed so to my youthful eyes; and it is needless to say that I gazed at them with keen curiosity. They rode up as far as a slight elevation in the street, stopped, took their glasses, and surveyed Cemetery Hill, where they could see the position of their enemy. This was just before the Louisiana “Tigers” made their famous charge.
What a racket that did make! It was an infantry charge, and the sound was as if a mil-
[pgbrk] ALBERTUS McCREARY
247
lion boys with sticks were beating on a board fence. It was not in volleys, but continuous.
When this firing began, we took shelter in the cellar, and during the next two days the bullets were continually flying across our yard, so that none of us dared to go to the barn. As we had a number of pet rabbits there, we were very much exercised about feeding them. A Confederate soldier offered to feed them for us, and did cross the yard, with the bullets whizzing around him. I remember how brave we thought him.
Speaking of bravery, there was another Con-
federate soldier who was so fearless that he climbed a cherry tree in the center of the yard and sat eating cherries in a most unconcerned manner, although the bullets were cutting through the leaves continually. Of course, these were stray bullets, for he could not be seen, but his position was just as dangerous. There was a line of sharpshooters just beyond us.
The soldiers taught us how to distinguish between the sound of a Minie rifle and of a musket ball; also between the different sounds made by the various shells flying over our heads. There were long shells, round shells, and solid shot — each sang its own peculiar song. We soon got to know them all.
Notwithstanding all this flying of shot and shell, there were only three accidents to citi-
zens, and only one of these was fatal. Miss Jennie Wade was killed as she was baking bread for the soldiers. She was shot by a stray bullet that came through an open window and struck her in the breast. In recent years a separate monument has been erected to her honor. She had lived in our family and was personally well known to us all. Mr. Mcllhenny, a connection of our family, was wounded slightly in the ankle. The third civilian victim — John Burns — was made famous by his part in the battle. As his fellow townsmen knew the adventure, he was out
looking for his cow when he was overtaken by the moving army and became a participant whether he would or no. I refer you to history for another version of the incident.
We got used, in a measure, to the fighting, and curiosity got the better of some of us. One of my brothers and I went to the garret, where a trap-door in the roof gave us a good view of Cemetery Hill and of the fields near the Emmetsburg Road. Standing on a ladder, with our heads above the door, we could plainly see the cannon on Cemetery Hill, with the men loading and firing. Every now and then we would see a man drop by the cannon. Once the flagstaff was broken, and the flag fell, but it was quickly put up again.
From this trap-door we saw Pickett’s charge.
“A BULLET STRUCK JUST ABOVE HIS HEAD AND KNOCKED OFF A PIECE OF BRICK”
[pgbrk] 248
GETTYSBURG: A BOY’S EXPERIENCE
A wonderful thing it was to see that long line of Confederates charge across the fields in good order, until they struck the masked batteries. When these batteries opened on them, everything fell into the greatest confusion, and soon clouds of smoke hid them from our sight. While we were watching this charge, a neighbor was watching it also, from his trap-door. He was peeping around the chimney, when a bullet struck just above his head and knocked off a piece of brick. He disappeared so quickly that we both laughed. Almost immediately two bullets struck within a foot of my head in the shingles of the roof, and we followed our neighbor’s example and dropped out of sight also. We found that Union sharpshooters on Cemetery Hill had seen our heads and shot at us, thinking that we were Confederate sharpshooters. Many of the houses along this ridge were sheltering sharpshooters.
Our interest in what was going on was so great that we could not resist trying to look out again; but we took the precaution this time to put up a board, so that we could look beneath, and were not so much exposed. We could see one house on a side street that seemed to be full of sharpshooters; we saw the flash and puff of smoke every time one fired. They were evidently doing so much harm to the batteries on Cemetery Hill that a gun was trained on this house, and in a very few moments it was filled full of holes, and the occupants were all driven out. Many of the sharpshooters were killed in various houses in town.
In the house of an uncle of mine a man was killed in an upper room whose windows overlooked the Cemetery. Years after the battle, the postmaster of Gettysburg received a letter from a man in the North who, describing the house exactly, said he was anxious to know if a soldier had been killed in that room during the battle; he wrote that he had shot at a man standing at one of those windows, and had seen him drop.
Once, hearing laughter outside, I looked out and saw a young boy standing in the middle of the street, throwing stones at the windows on either side and laughing loudly every time he broke a glass. Bullets were flying down the street, and every time one whizzed near him he would duck his head, laugh, and immediately renew his efforts to break windows.
I saw that he was not one of the town boys, and asked the soldiers who he was. One of them said, “Oh! that little devil followed the army up from the South.” He seemed to be having great fun breaking Yankee windows.
I do not know what became of him.
I was standing on the side porch at a time
when it was safe for me to do so, when a surgeon rode up and, dismounting, called to me to hold his horse. I went up, and was standing by its head with the rein in my hand, when 1 heard a shell coming toward me. The noise came nearer and nearer until it seemed just above my head. I could stand it no longer. I dropped the rein and made for the other side of the street. I reached it none too soon, for as I gained the porch the shell struck near where I had been standing. It made a tremendous noise when it exploded. The horse I had been holding, it is needless to say, went down the street at a swift pace. I do not know whether his master ever saw him again.
Before the battle I had been wearing my soldier’s cap, but an incident occurred that led me to discard it for one of another kind until more peaceful times. 1 was standing on the pavement in front of our own door, watching a squad of Confederates approaching (we had lost our fear of them by this time). When they came opposite me, the officer in charge called, “Halt!” and pointed at me.
Two of the men left the ranks, came over to me, and took me by the arms, saying, "Comeon.”
I was greatly frightened at this, and called for my father, who happened to be just inside. He at once came out, and the whole family with him, and asked what they wanted.
“He is in the army and must come with us,” they said.
Father laughed and said, “Oh, he is only a school-boy”; but they started off with me, and it was only when a number of the neighbors, who had come out of their houses on hearing the commotion, finally persuaded them to believe I was not in the army, that they let me off.
Oh, how frightened 1 was! I cannot convey to any one the feeling that swept over me as I was being led away, as I thought, to a Southern prison and death.
A number of citizens had been taken during the raids into Pennsylvania, and carried to Southern prisons. For this reason my father remained in the background when our house was searched for ammunition and soldiers, and made me go forward and show them about. One officer I remember especially. He was very polite and apologized for giving us so much trouble, saying he had to obey orders. He had a very beautiful stiletto with a pearl handle. I begged him to give it to me, but he said he might need it.
I had picked up eight rifles in the yard on the first day and hid them in a shed under a pile of leaves. The third day a squad of soldiers came in search of guns and ammunition; I think they were getting short of both.
[pgbrk] ALBERTUS McCREARY
249
I went out as usual and asked them what they wanted. They said they were looking for guns. One fellow took me by the shoulders and said, "Now, Johnny, 1 know you have a lot of guns hid; show me where they are.” I denied that 1 had any. He marched me along, and every little while would say, “Where are they?” And 1 still denied having any. At last they neared the shed. I stuck out that I hadn’t any guns, but when they reached the door I was feeling pretty panicky; I did not know what they might do with me if they found the guns under the leaves. Then the fellow pushed open the door and kicked among the leaves. “Oh, oh!” he exclaimed, and looked hard at me.
My face must have betrayed my fears, for he burst out laughing and patted me on the back, saying in a kind tone, “Too bad, too bad!” But the guns were gathered up and taken away.
I saw a great many wounded men making their way to the hospitals which had been hastily established in many places in the town. One poor fellow came limping on one foot, with his hand on his horse for support. He stopped at our steps for a few moments. I ran into the house,
got a broom, sawed off the handle, tacked a cross-piece to the end, and soon had a crutch that would enable him to get on more comfortably. He thanked me for it and went on his way more rapidly.
At another time two men came along, one helping the other by the arm. The face of one of them was so covered with bandages that we could see only his eyes. The other man said that his lower jaw had been shot away. He was suffering greatly and made a sign for water. I ran quickly and brought it, but he could not drink. He held his head back, and I poured the water on the bandages about his
mouth, and it soaked through the bandages into his throat. The unwounded soldier thanked me and gave me a battered quarter which he said he had found in the fire at Fredericksburg.
Another soldier, who had his wrist wrapped up, stopped at our steps. A surgeon who was in the house came out and asked the soldier what was the matter, and was told that a bullet was in the wrist. The surgeon quickly unwrapped the bandages, and sure enough there was a hole on one side and a big lump on the other. He made a slight cut over the lump, and out dropped the bullet. It became a very sore wound and gave the man much trouble.
He stayed with us several days, until he was sent home.
Two men were carrying another on a stretcher and stopped to rest at our door. Father asked how the injured man was wounded, as he seemed to b e suffering great pain. They answered that his hip was broken and that it caused him great suffering to be moved. Father had them bring him into the house, as we still had a bed to spare. He was a captain, and had been in the Mexican War. He refused to have his leg amputated— said he would die first. We sent for his wife, who came on with their little daughter. They were with us six weeks. All the doctors could do did not save him. He died from lockjaw, and his shrieks of pain could be heard half a block away. We never knew what became of the wife and child; we never heard from them after they left with his body.
There were a number of hospitals within a block of us. The Presbyterian church just across the street, the Catholic church a few doors above, the United Presbyterian church back of our lot, and the German Reformed at the end of High Street, were used as hospitals;
“BEING LED AWAY, AS I THOUGHT, TO PRISON AND DEATH ”
[pgbrk] 250
GETTYSBURG: A BOY’S EXPERIENCE
two school-houses, half a block up High Street, and the court-house, a short distance down Baltimore Street, and many private residences near by were all turned to the same account. We were saved much annoyance by having a red flag put up at our door, to show that the house was a hospital. All of our beds were occupied, and we boys slept on the floor and ate at the Sanitary Commission for weeks. We thought hard-tack and bacon fried together a great treat. The provisions we had in the house were soon consumed, and had it not been for the Commission we should have starved to death. Their wagon stopped every morning with supplies of meat and bread and anything they had to distribute. We not only cooked for the patients in the house, but sent quantities of food to those in the church across the street. The pews in the church were covered with boards, and then straw and blankets were spread on them to make beds for the wounded. There were many cases of severe wounds and many deaths in that church. The dead were buried in trenches behind it. One day I was watching them bury the dead in this trench, when men with a stretcher brought out a body covered only with a sheet. They drew back the sheet and disclosed the form of a young man perfect in every way, with only a small black hole in his breast.
A number of colored people lived in the western part of the town, and on the first day a great many of them were gathered together by the Confederate soldiers and marched out of town. As they passed our house our old washerwoman called out, “Good-by; we are going back to slavery.” Most of them were crying and moaning.
We never expected to see "Old Liz” again, but the day after the battle ended she came walking in, exclaiming, “Thank God, I’s alive yet.” We all crowded around her, anxious to know how she had got away. I wish I could repeat her story as she told it to us; that is more than I can undertake, but the main fact was this: She was marched with the rest down the street, and there was such a crowd that when they were opposite the Lutheran church, in the confusion she slipped into the church without being seen, and climbed up into the belfry; she stayed there for the two days without anything to eat or drink.
A Union soldier came to the house for something to eat on the. morning of the fourth day, and said that he had been hid in the belfry of the school-house from the morning of the first day until then. He had run in during the retreat, and there was no way of getting out without being captured. He was almost
starved, for he had had only a few drops of water in his canteen and a little hard-tack. We soon fixed him up, and, refreshed with food and water, he started out to find his regiment.
I was asleep on the floor the night of the third day, and was awakened just at daybreak by a booming. I sprang up, saying to myself, “Well, another day of it!”
My brother entered the room just then, his face all smiles.
“What is it?” I asked.
“What’s what?” he answered.
“What was that firing?” I said.
“Oh, that was David falling out of bed. But look out of the window!”
I looked, and gave a cheer, for there were our blue-coated men marching down the street. The battle was over. But we were not yet safe. A rumor was spread that filled us with a new fear: the .Confederates, we were told, were about to shell .the town. Happily, the rumor was a false one; there was no more firing, and we were able to go out to look about us.
There were some sorry-Iooking homes in our neighborhood. The Confederate soldiers had entered them during their occupation of the town and tried to see how much damage they could do. I went home with a young friend of mine, whose family had been in a neighboring cellar during the three days of the battle, and found that almost everything had either been cut to pieces or destroyed in some way. Pieces of furniture were burned and broken, a desk had been destroyed, bookcases knocked down, and the books torn and shattered. To add more to the disorder and destruction, the soldiers had taken a half-barrel of flour, mixed it with water to make a thin paste, put into this the feathers from feather-beds, and thrown it over everything — walls, furniture, and down the stairways. Of course, the owners were indignant and angry, for it meant great loss to them; but there was nothing to be done about it.
We had an old cow that had been in the family for years, and the morning of the first day of the fight we had put her in pasture as usual. This pasture was near the edge of town. Of course, we saw nothing of her during the three days of fighting. Often one of us would say, " I wonder what has become of the old cow.” The general opinion was that we had seen the last of her. On the morning of the fourth day, Father, my brother, and I took a walk over the field to see if we could find any trace of her. We saw many terrible sights. Dead soldiers were lying around thick, dead horses, and many cow skins and heads;
[pgbrk] "A UNION SOLDIER, ALMOST STARVED, CAME TO THE HOUSE FOR SOMETHING TO EAT ”
from this last we soon came to the conclusion that our cow had been killed for food like the rest, so we gave her up. As we were eating supper one evening a week or more after the battle, we heard a familiar bellowing in the street. Everybody sprang from the table and rushed out. There stood our dear old cow, looking as happy as it is possible for a cow to look at being home again. We petted and hugged her in pur pleasure at finding her alive, and soon had her in the stable in her own familiar stall. Then we discovered that she had a bullet-hole in her neck and one in her side. She was not severely hurt, however, and both bullets came out eventually. We found out later that all the cows in that particular field had got out in some way the first day of the fight and had wandered off about ten miles from town, beyond the firing-line. After the battle they all found their way back to town.
In going over the field that first day after the fight, the many strange and terrible sights made a strong and lasting impression on my mind. In one place there were as many as forty dead horses — where a battery had been
planked; the bodies were much swollen, the feet standing up in the air. Broken wagons and guns, belts, cartridge-boxes and canteens, blankets, and all sorts of soldier equipment were lying around everywhere. The fences were all down; only a few posts, here and there, were left, like sentinels on guard.
Dead soldiers were everywhere. Near a small house lay the bodies of two Confederate soldiers, and on looking into the house 1 saw two others, one on a bed and the other on the floor. I went in to see if the one on the bed might not be alive. He was dead. He was a young man, and on his breast was a medal of some order. I was tempted to take it off, but I did not because I thought it might lead to his identification.
The stench from the battle-field after the fight was so bad that every one went about with a bottle of pennyroyal or peppermint oil. The burial of the dead commenced at once, and many were buried along the line where they fought and fell, and, in many cases, so near the surface that their clothing came through the earth.
251
[pgbrk] 252
GETTYSBURG: A BOY’S EXPERIENCE
We made a long tramp that first day arid did not reach home until late in the afternoon. There we found plenty to take up our time and attention. The surgeons were at work in the hospital that adjoined our back yard. I spent hours on the fence watching them operating on the wounded. On a table out of doors opera-tions of all kinds were performed. I must say I got pretty well hardened to such sights.
One day shortly after the battle, as we were walking over the field, we came to a squad of soldiers who had opened a trench where some of the dead had been hastily buried. They were taking up the bodies and placing them in coffins to be buried in the National Cemetery. The sight became so horrible that we could not endure it and quickly left the spot.
A man came to the town with patent coffins, and many a poor fellow took his last journey in one of them. The lid had a box in which ice was placed, thus making it possible to take bodies any distance.
It was a sad sight to see relatives visiting the fields in search of some dear one. Sometimes they would find him in one of the many hospitals, but more often among the dead. One young lady came to our house in search of a brother who had been wounded. She came on the late train and stayed at the house until morning. When morning came she went with my brother to find him, but he had died during the night.
At the extreme end of our lot there was a large barn which was used as a prison for Confederate soldiers: there were four hundred in it at one time. The barn and yard around it were full of men. For food they gave them boxes of hard-tack and water from our pump. This was all they had. One poor fellow came up to the house with his head tied up, and said he had a bullet wound in the back part of it, and that his head was so sore he could not eat hard-tack. My sister made him some broth, and he was allowed to sleep on a bench in the yard by the house. The next day the men were moved away to some Northern prison; but they did not take the graybacks with them. The barn was so alive with them that no one dared go into it until it had been thoroughly whitewashed inside and out.
Ten years after the battle the postmaster of Gettysburg received a letter from a man in North Carolina, who said he had been wounded in the head at the Battle of Gettysburg, was taken prisoner, and kept in a barn overnight; that a young lady made some broth for him, and that he would like to have her address, as he wished to correspond with her with a view to matrimony. He said he was well off, and
had a fine vineyard. We were glad to know that all was well with him, but there was no correspondence.
At the time of the War lead was very scarce, and we could get thirteen cents a pound for it, so all the boys hunted lead bullets. We would go along Culp’s Hill, poke among the leaves, and sometimes find what we called pockets, a lot of bullets in a pile — eight or ten pounds; as it took only eight of a certain kind to make a pound, I gathered many pounds myself in this way. The large shells were full of bullets, and we found many of them that had not exploded; we would unscrew the cap-end, and, if we were careful, fill the shell with water before we undertook to extract the bullets.
Sometimes boys became careless. A schoolmate of mine, with others of us, had been hunting bullets on Cemetery Hill. He found a shell, and, the contents not coming out fast enough for him, he struck it upon a rock upon which he was sitting, and made a spark which exploded the shell. We carried him to his home, and the surgeons did what they could for him, but he never regained consciousness and died in about an hour. With all my familiarity with horrors, I nearly fainted when I saw the surgeons probing his wound.
I often wonder why more boys were not injured. Almost every boy had a can of powder hidden in the house or barn, with rifles or carbines to shoot it off in. We would go to Brick-yard Lane, a favorite resort of the boys, load the rifles good and strong, leaving the ramrod in, and then shoot into the air. We never knew where the ramrods went. Another trick was to go to the woods, place five or six large Wentworth shells among dry leaves and sticks, set fire to the pile, and run off to a safe distance and wait for the explosion. It made a racket that put Fourth of July in the shade.
The only other accident that I witnessed happened a year after the battle. I was passing along High Street, and had reached Power’s Stone-yard, when I heard a terrible explosion behind me. I turned back to see what had happened. There 1 saw a young schoolmate lying on his back with his bowels blown away. He looked at me for a second, then closed his eyes in death. Near him was a man almost torn to pieces, his hands hanging in shreds.
He was promptly cared for, and, although badly wounded, losing both his hands and one leg, he lived. He was a stranger in the place, and was there to visit the battle-field. He was trying to empty a shell he had found on the field. A lady in a house opposite had seen the boy come out of the stone-yard and say to the man that hitting the shell on a stone was
[pgbrk] ALBERTUS McCREARY
253
a very dangerous thing to do. Just as he spoke, down came the shell on the stone and exploded.
Visitors soon began to come to see the battlefield, and all wanted relics. We were always cn the lookout for bullets and pieces of shell, in fact, anything that could be easily handled, to sell to them. We found that a piece of tree with a bullet embedded in it was a great prize and a good seller. Every boy went out with a hatchet to chop pieces from the trees in which bullets had lodged. I found several trees with bullets in them that had met in mid-air and stuck together. These were considered a great find. Lamps were made of round shells. The caps were taken out, a tube for a wick was placed in them, and the shell was fastened to a square block of wood, thus making a very useful and convenient relic. The guide-books that soon came out were another source of revenue to the boys, and continue so to the present day.
It was not until 1865 that we again had a stirring time.
The National Cemetery had been laid out, and bodies were brought from all parts of the field and buried there. The Cemetery was to be dedicated, and Mr. Lincoln was to be there. It was a great day for the boys when he arrived. We all wanted to see him, and my strongest wish was to shake hands with him. I saw him several times, and was thrilled with patriotic enthusiasm every time. He stopped at a house at York Street and the corner of Diamond, and I got close to the open door and had a good view of him walking up and down the hall. He seemed very tall and gaunt to me, but his face was wonderful to look upon. It was such a sad face and so full of kindly feeling that one felt at home with him at once. I was fascinated, and kept going up to the steps a step at a time until I was at the very door and very near to him. He did not look up, but kept walking up and down, no doubt thinking over the great speech he was about
to deliver. I watched him until he turned into the parlor and the door shut.
In the afternoon there was a parade, and great crowds went out to the Cemetery. A platform had been raised near the monument for the speakers, and it is estimated that twenty-five thousand people gathered about it to hear that address.
I squeezed my way through the mass of people until I was about ten feet from the platform on which, of course, sat Mr. Lincoln and Edward Everett. I waited for Mr. Everett to get through his speech with what patience I could. It was long, I remember, but what he said made no lodgment in my mind; I was only waiting to hear Mr. Lincoln. At last he arose, and as he stood up he seemed taller than ever, in contrast to Mr. Everett; I am sure he was listened to with greater attention, though only a few really understood the greatness of the words there and then spoken. I have always been proud that I heard them.
In the evening there was a meeting in the Presbyterian church, and it was reported that Mr. Lincoln was to be there. The church was so crowded that many were turned away. I managed to work myself past the guard at the door and about half way down the aisle; the aisle was blocked with others unable to get seats. I looked every way for a sight of Mr. Lincoln, and by the time the services were nearly over 1 felt sure he was not there.
As the people arose to leave, I turned around to leave also, and there was Mr. Lincoln in the pew just at my side. I held my ground until he was in the aisle near me, when I put out my hand and said, “Mr. Lincoln, will you shake hands with me?’’
“Certainly,” he said, and gave me a good, strong grasp.
He moved on and was soon lost to view, but I was a proud boy, and to this day feel a thrill of pride to have pressed the hand of one of the greatest men the world has known.
[pgbrk] WHAT WE KNOW ABOUT CANCER
BY
BURTON J. HENDRICK
ILLUSTRATED WITH PHOTOGRAPHS
WHAT is the medical profession in this country doing to stop the ravages of cancer? A short time ago Professor Ehrlich, the great German investigator, in the course of a visit to our most important cancer laboratories, made several statements which partly answer this question. As a result of recent progress in cancer research, he declared, the beginning of the end of the cancer problem is in sight. The ultimate conquest of the disease, added Ehrlich, is as certain as was the capture of Port Arthur after the Japanese had taken the first trench. It is to the cancer laboratories of the United States, he continued, that European investigators now look for the most important results. As a matter of fact, many of the discoveries upon which Ehrlich based his optimistic statements were made first on this side of the Atlantic.
The medical profession has learned more about cancer in the last six years than in the preceding six thousand. True as this statement is, however, it must not be misconstrued. No cancer “cure” has been discovered. Investigators have penetrated many secrets of the disease, but they have not yet restored a single
human sufferer to health. From the standpoint of science, however, the discovery of new principles of eternal applicability is far more important than the discovery of specific remedies. Thus Pasteur’s demonstration that living microbes cause contagious diseases meant more to medical science than his successful treatment of hydrophobia, which was merely one application of this general principle. Likewise, the cancer investigations of the last few years have revealed certain hitherto unknown principles that will eventually assume great importance in the practical treatment of the disease.
One in Every Eight Women Past the Age of Thirty-five Dies of Cancer
It is peculiarly appropriate that the United States should take a leading part in this work. In all probability, cancer is the worst physical scourge with which we have to deal. It annually destroys half as many lives as tuberculosis; but it is an even greater menace, because, whereas the mortality from tuberculosis steadily decreases year by year, that from cancer steadily increases. The actual facts even medical men themselves hesitate to discuss. How many realize, for example, that, in England, of all women who have
254
[pgbrk] PROFESSOR LEO LOEB
OF THE UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA: THE PIONEER CANCER INVESTIGATOR IN THIS COUNTRY
reached the age of thirty-five years, one in every eight dies of cancer, and one in every eleven men? Yet the latest official report of the Registrar General of England coldly declares that this is the present situation. Whether the same figures apply to the United States cannot be determined with available statistics; but as living conditions and medical practice represent about the same standards in both countries, the probability is that they do.
Indeed, medical science would not be surprised to learn that the mortality is greater
in the United States than elsewhere. We pride ourselves upon our general prosperity and enlightenment, and those seem precisely the two factors that chiefly encourage the growth of cancer. Spread out a map of the world, and mark the countries that have progressed farthest in material well-being, in education, government, sanitation, and other essentials of modern civilization; those are the countries that suffer most from the cancer plague. In
the eastern world, not Asia or Africa, but en-*
lightened Europe; in the western, not Mexico,
255
[pgbrk] 256
WHAT WE KNOW ABOUT CANCER
Honduras, or Panama, but the United States and Canada — these are the countries most grievously afflicted. No savage tribe is absolutely immune, but cancer assails most violently those peoples that have reached the highest points in civilization. And not only this, but it apparently bears heaviest upon the most sanitary and enlightened parts of these countries. In Europe the nations that suffer most are not Russia or Hungary or Italy or Spain, but Germany, France, Sweden, Norway, and, above all, England. In London, the greatest mortality is found, not in the East End, but in Hampstead, Marylebone, and Chelsea, which include the city’s wealthiest parts. Similarly, in New York, the Russian Jews and Italians who so largely populate the crowded tenement sections are comparatively immune, whereas the more sanitary parts of the town are favorite breeding-places. Where diseases of known contagiousness, like tuberculosis, typhoid fever, diphtheria, and pneumonia, most abound, cancer seems to find a less strong foothold than in other more salubrious sections; as by some mysterious and inexorable law of compensation it finds its way mainly into the homes of the prosperous and enlightened.
Cancer a Disease of Highly Developed Civilization
Thus cancer, like death itself, apparently loves a shining mark. It strikes, not so fre-
quently at the vicious, the uncleanly, the miserable, but at those lives that promise most to themselves and their communities. In prisons, insane asylums, and workhouses it is only exceptionally found. Among men, according to experienced investigators, few drunkards become cancerous, and, among women, few prostitutes. Married women more frequently die from this cause than unmarried, and fertile women more frequently than barren. Among animals, reptiles are practically the only species in which cancers have not been found, but it is the domesticated animals, or those living in closest association with man, that suffer most. Thus horses, cows, pigs, parrots, canary-birds, cats, mice, rats — all these have cancer; and it is the closest animal associate of man, the dog, that is the most commonly afflicted. If all the lap-dogs of Fifth Avenue and our other fashionable quarters were examined, a considerable proportion would be found to be afflicted with one or more malignant tumors.
In all probability, this prevalence of cancer in the most civilized communities and in the most sanitary quarters is explained by the fact that it is an affliction of middle and post-middle life. Among savage peoples and nations where only elementary sanitation is practised, and the food supply is irregular, the death rate is higher, the average length of life is shorter, and infant mortality is greater. A smaller percentage of
LABORATORY FOR THE EXPERIMENTAL STUDY OF CANCER, CONTAINING 5,000 WHITE MICE AND WHITE RATS IN SEVERAL STAGES OF THE DISEASE
[pgbrk] LABORATORY ASSISTANT PREPARING CANCER TISSUE FOR THE MICROSCOPE
the population, in other words, reaches the cancerous age. Thus most scientists would explain the comparative absence of cancer among prostitutes by the brutal truth that only a small number live long enough to become subject to the disease. These considerations bring us face to face with a most startling circumstance: that nature seems to be subtly attempting to undo much of the work of modern medical science. We save yearly by diphtheria antitoxin the lives of thousands of babies and children, only that they may grow up to become victims of cancer. We rescue many thousands
of young men and women from tuberculosis, so that they may reap, as their whirlwind, an even more dreadful malady. Some economists have explained the great famines of India on the ground that modern sanitation has so decreased the death rate that the country cannot sustain the increased population; and likewise the increase in cancer may probably be accounted for, not by any absolute increase in virulence, but by the fact that modern medical science, in its merciful work of prolonging life, is simply providing the disease with more abundant soil.
257
[pgbrk] DR. JAMES W. JOBLING
WHO, IN ASSOCIATION WITH DR. SIMON FLEXNER. HAS HAD CHARGE OF CANCER EXPERIMENTATION AT THE ROCKEFELLER INSTITUTE
Inasmuch as sanitation has reached a high development in this country, the likelihood is that, unless the malady is checked, it will become our greatest national scourge. Until 1900, however, little progress had been made. The attitude of science had been for many years one of hopeless pessimism. Modern medical progress had almost scratched the word “incurable” from its lexicon; cancer, however, was still looked upon as one of the fundamental facts of nature, like death itself, with which we could
hardly interfere. The cause of the disease had been the age-long riddle of pathological science. The greatest medical minds of the nineteenth century had attacked the problem and had retired humiliated. The endless search for the cancer parasite, the fact that forty or fifty different organisms had been described as the specific cause, had brought the whole subject more or less into disrepute.
But up to this time the investigators had not had a fair chance at the problem. In the
258
[pgbrk] GRATWICK LABORATORY OF BUFFALO, N. Y.
BUILT BY MRS. WILLIAM II. GRATWICK. FOR CANCER RESEARCH. THIS WAS THE FIRST INSTITUTION FOUNDED EXCLUSIVELY FOR THE STUDY OF THIS SUBJECT
study of cancer they had not been able to utilize the experimental method. History discloses the fact that nearly all great medical discoveries are the result of experiments on living animals. From the time when Galen cut open the arteries of a dog and found that they actually contained blood, and not, as the most respectable schoolmen declared, simply “air,” to the day when Behring evolved the diphtheria anti-toxin by experimenting upon guinea-pigs, animals have supplied the basis of nearly all real medical progress. And in the study of contagious diseases great advancement has been made only in those affections that can readily be transmitted to animals. We know much about typhoid fever and tuberculosis, for laboratory animals can be readily infected with these diseases and thus furnish the groundwork for experimentation; we know little about scarlet fever and measles — we have not even discovered the causative germs — because animals are naturally immune to these infections. A similar condition of affairs had blocked cancer research. Nearly all animals have the disease in nature, but no method had been found of readily transmitting it to them. Several investigators had even experimented upon themselves, injecting under their own skins small
pieces of human cancer; in no case, however, had a malignant growth supervened. One or two investigators, especially Hanau in Germany and Moreau in France, had reported actual success in transplanting cancerous tumors from mouse to mouse; but their results had made little impression, and, by the time the new interest in the subject began, had been entirely forgotten.
Inside a Cancer Laboratory
But all this has changed. There are five American laboratories now in which animal experimentation in cancer is extensively carried on — the Gratwick Laboratory at Buffalo, the Medical Schools of Cornell, Harvard, and the University of Pennsylvania, and the Rockefeller Institute in New York. White mice and white rats and a smaller number of dogs furnish the foundation for this work. The average cancer laboratory looks more like a breeder’s establishment than a scientific headquarters. Upon the shelves are dozens of cages, filled with hundreds, in some cases thousands, of white mice and rats in different stages of the disease. The first sensation, "on entering such a room, is naturally one of repulsion; on closer inspection, however, the situation is not as painful as the
259
[pgbrk] 260
WHAT WE KNOW ABOUT CANCER
imagination at first conceives. If the animals suffer, they give few outward indications of the fact. The mice are active, playful, sometimes quarrelsome — that is, they behave in every way like normal animals; they keep their coats clean and glossy, eat voraciously, and run about their cages as actively as their healthy brethren. Even mice in which good-sized tumors have developed frequently give birth to young, and suckle and care for them; and in some cases, in search for society, they eat through the cages into those adjoining. Among human beings there is no physical suffering from cancer except in the latest stages, and thousands of patients do not suffer acutely even then. It is something of a relief to learn, therefore, that practically no mice used for experimental purposes, and very few rats, ever reach
the period when really acute pain sets in. Their tumors, for the most part, are hard nodules; if you pinch them tightly, the animal does not give the slightest indication of pain. As soon as they ulcerate—the period when, in human beings, suffering begins — the mice almost invariably die. If they do not, they are chloroformed, for they have then lost their usefulness for experimental purposes.
Each animal is carefully marked — a dash of purple dye on the tail, a spot of red on the back—for identification. To each is assigned a special card in an elaborate card catalogue; and upon this one can read its life history and trace the day-by-day development of its affliction.
Eight years ago Dr. Leo Loeb, then of the Chicago Polyclinic and now Assistant Professor
DR. HARVEY R. GAYLORD
DIRECTOR OF THE GRATWICK LABORATORY, FAMOUS FOR ITS DISCOVERY THAT THE LAWS OF IMMUNITY APPLY TO CANCER
[pgbrk] BURTON J. HENDRICK
261
of Pathology at the University of Pennsylvania, exhibited before a medical society in Boston several white rats with large growing malignant tumors. Dr. Loeb explained that these growths had not developed naturally upon the animals, but had been transplanted to them. He had discovered a white rat with a large sarcomatous cancer on the thyroid gland, and had injected small pieces into the exhibited animals. The
medical world at first refused to consider the matter seriously; in fact, Dr. Loeb had not only conclusively demonstrated the trans-plantability of cancer, but had made the first accurate observations of its method of growth. He clearly proved that a malignant tumor could be transferred from one animal of a particular species to another animal of identically the same species. Thus rat cancer, such as he originally experimented with, could be transferred only to a rat. He tried it upon guinea-pigs and hens, but always failed, and he could not even make it grow upon mice. More remarkable still, this sarcoma, which found its first habitat on a white rat, would not develop upon a gray one. The only exception was fur-
nished by a hybrid animal — a cross between a gray and white rat — upon which a transplantation was finally made. In later experiments, Dr. Loeb, as well as his successors, had similar experiences. A few years ago he came into possession of a Japanese waltzing-mouse — a little gray and white rodent that has the peculiarity of almost constant circular motion — upon which a natural cancer was growing.
All attempts to transplant this upon popular American varieties of white and gray mice failed, and Dr. Loeb had to ransack the market to find more of the Japanese breed. When he finally succeeded, he had no difficulty in making the tumor grow upon them.
No Cancer Cells Where 'There Have Not Been Cancer Cells Before
More interesting still v/as Dr. Loeb’s demonstration of the manner in which the cancers grew. His method was to take a small section, perhaps no larger than a pin-head, and inject it under the skin. It was always at this point of inoculation that the malignant tumor ultimately appeared. Dr. Loeb soon observed that in no
THIS MOUSE, AND HUNDREDS OF OTHERS, COMPLETELY RECOVERED FROM LARGE GROWING CANCERS. AFTER RECOVERY, IT WAS IMPOSSIBLE TO MAKE CANCER GROW ON THEM AGAIN. THESE EXPERIMENTS PROVED THAT CANCER WAS NOT AN INCURABLE DISEASE
[pgbrk] DR. G. H. A. GLOWES
ONE OF THE LEADING CANCER INVESTIGATORS IN THE UNITED STATES
case had he really started a new growth. The tumor that had spontaneously developed in his first animal simply continued to grow upon the second. A microscopic examination disclosed that, when the small piece of cancer was implanted in the new body, its central portion soon died and became putrescent, only the edges, which came into contact with the tissue of the host, remaining alive. It was always from these peripheral cells that the growth developed. Never did it start from the tissue of the new animal. The transplanted cells, that is, did not set the surrounding tissues on fire — did not infect them. No cancer cells developed where there had not been cancer cells before. Dr. Loeb had done precisely what the gardener does when he takes a plant from one garden and places it in another; he does not create a new growth, he simply finds new soil for an old one. This is exactly what happens when a human being,
sick with cancer, develops secondary growths in other parts of the body. These "metas-tases,” as they are called scientifically, are not independent tumors; they are caused by the fact that certain cells of the primary growth get into the blood or lymph and are lodged in other parts of the body, where they grow. This is evident from the fact that the secondary growths have all the characteristics of the first. If a cancer of the lung, for example, forms a metastasis in the liver, the new tumor is formed, not of liver tissue, but of lung. A piece of lung, that is, starts growing on the liver. If a cancer of the stomach metastasizes in the breast, a piece of stomach simply arises on this exterior surface.
At first blush this seemed to do away with the idea that a specific organism caused cancer, or that the disease was contagious. Apparently Dr. Loeb had at last found the cancer microbe —
262
[pgbrk] BURTON J. HENDRICK
263
and this turned out to be merely the cancer cell; and apparently the only way of transmitting it was the deliberate transplantation of this cell from one animal body into another of the same species. Further experiments also seemed to indicate that cancer was not contagious, at least in the commonly accepted meaning of the word. Large pieces were placed in cages full of rats, but no animals became infected. Cancer cells were mixed with their food, but the rats which devoured them in large quantities did not “catch” the disease. Dr. Loeb injected into selected animals certain fluids present in cancer growths; these frequently developed cancers, but an examination of the fluids showed, in all cases, that they contained cancer cells. He then subjected the cancerous tissue to certain chemical processes that killed the cells, but which, in all probability, would not have killed the microbes, had any been present. But he obtained no cancer grafts from any material in which the life of the cell itself had been destroyed.
These and other experiments which soon followed, notably those of Professor C. O. Jensen of Copenhagen, aroused universal interest in the study of cancer. Experimentalists began ransacking the world for mice and rats in which natural malignant tumors had developed. Professional dealers, tempted by large rewards, kept the closest watch upon their stock, and. up to the present time, have sent nearly one thousand such animals to the several laboratories engaged in the work. The living mouse thus becomes for cancer research what the test tube is for ordinary bacteriological work. In no field of investigation are such quantities of animals used. The Imperial Cancer Research Fund in London has had thirty thousand in six years. In three years the Buffalo Laboratory has used twenty thousand. In the same time the Rockefeller Institute has had fifteen thousand rats and mice under observation. The necessity of having so many animals explains why the experiments are practically limited to rats and mice, and are not applied to horses and cows. Not only is the initial cost lower, but the little rodents are easier to watch and care for.
Attention has been called to certain facts that seem to controvert the microbe theory; in one important respect, however, cancer growth resembles that of bacteria and disease-bearing parasites. Like disease germs, the cancer cell has unlimited power of proliferation. And, again, as with microbes, this power increases in virulence as the cells are transplanted from animal to animal. If you inject a culture of typhoid bacteria into a guinea-pig, it grows
at first only with moderation. If you take this culture from this guinea-pig and inject it into another, it reproduces more rapidly; and soon from animal to animal. As long as soil—or food — is provided, there is practically no limit to growth.
Cancer Cell the Anarchist of the Body
Cancer cells behave in practically the same way, and it is only in its marvelous reproductive capacity that cancer tissue materially differs from normal tissue. Under the microscope the cancer cell and the normal cell appear as virtually the same thing. In our imagination we associate cancer with everything disgusting and horrible; looked at through the microscope, however, it is really very beautiful. It assumes millions of delicate, intricate forms, resembling hoar-frost in its fine network, its crystalline and constantly varying tracery. This tissue becomes a menace only because it has the power of persistent and unlimited growth. General body cells reproduce themselves only slightly: normal tissue is constantly wearing out, and new cells grow to take its place; the body cells, that is, reproduce only for regenerative purposes. One's thumb, for example, reaches a certain size and then stops; the tissue cells that compose it multiply only to replace wear and tear. If the cells did continuously proliferate, in a few years our thumbs would become several feet long; if all the body cells grew uninterruptedly we should all develop into frightful Brob-dingnagians. But a subtle influence, called by scientists the power of organization, supervises this growth, keeps each member in check, and makes it develop symmetrically in accordance with the requirements of the body and the external world. But this power of organization has no influence upon the cancer cell. It is the anarchist of the body; it defies all laws, acknowledges no responsibilities — simply starts off on an absolutely aimless courseof itsown, andgrows and grows and grows. It is normal tissue gone wild—running amuck. In clumsy fashion it reproduces the form and sometimes the functions of the particular part of the body on which it starts. A cancer of the breast in women secretes a rudimentary casein; a cancer of the stomach has traces of the gastric juices; a cancer of the pancreas has vestiges of trypsin — the digestive fluid which the normal pancreas provides; a cancer of the skin, like the skin itself, tends to hornify. So far as science can discover, this cancer tissue in itself contains no death-dealing properties. It simply grows and grows, digs down into surrounding tissue and frequently involves and destroys a bodily organ, such as the stomach or liver, which is indis-
[pgbrk] 264 WHAT WE KNOW ABOUT CANCER
pensable to human life. In the large majority of cases, the unequal pressure upon the growing mass causes part of the cancer tissue to die, ulceration sets in, and the wound, like any other exposed wound, becomes infected with blood-poisoning bacteria. Cancer victims die, that is, not from any destructive toxin inherent in the cancer growth itself, but usually from toxemia.
Cancer Tissue Apparently Immortal
How tremendous is this capacity for growth the recent experiments on animals have for the first time made clear. In the early attempts there were only a small proportion of "takes.” Thus, the first experimenters failed because they used only one or two, or, at most, a dozen animals. But one of the important facts learned is that, in the first transplantations, only a few animals, even of the same species, are susceptible to these grafts. Sometimes only one mouse in a hundred can be inoculated. At the Imperial Cancer Institute in London, a primary tumor has been transplanted nearly four hundred times without being made to grow on a single mouse. But after a naturally growing cancer has been transferred from the first animal into the second, it can be transplanted much more readily into the third. Clinical observations long ago established the fact that any irritating interference with a cancer almost always stimulates its growth. In his earliest experiments Dr. Loeb found that, by merely drawing a silk thread through a dormant or slowly developing tumor, he could transform it into a rapidly growing one. Cutting with a knife produced the same effect. This accounts for the commonly observed fact that, when extirpated cancers in human beings recur, they increase in size much more rapidly than the original growth.
In 1902 Professor C. O. Jensen of Copenhagen came into possession of a white mouse afflicted with a cancer on the mammary gland. He transplanted this into hundreds of other animals and sent them to all parts of the world — to Berlin, Frankfort, Paris, Rome, Tokio, London, New York, Boston, Philadelphia, and Buffalo. This tumor, which has been transplanted into hundreds of thousands of mice, has developed a most amazing virulence. It has been steadily growing for six years, and has already reached its one hundredth generation. Apparently nothing can stop it; from present indications it may be growing thousands of years hence. As long as it regularly receives soil and nourishment — that is, animals to grow upon — it is immortal. Several tons have already accumulated. When vve consider that two hundred mice can be in-
oculated from a piece no bigger than the tip of one’s finger, and that each of these two hundred can in turn be used to inoculate two hundred more, its possibilities of growth are seen to be measurable only by the infinite. A single inoculation, if transplanted as many times and into as many animals as possible, in a short time would consume, in its growth, all the earth’s nitrogen. In a single year, according to an ingenious mathematical computation, it would attain a bulk eight hundred and ninety times larger than the sun and fill a space that it would take light one hundred and five years to traverse. And the amazing thing is that the uncountable cells that would make up this mass would all be lineal descendants of the cancer cells first found upon the little Copenhagen mouse. The scientist who to-day places under the microscope a Jensen tumor from any of the numerous laboratories in which they are growing, will find the structure of the cells to be identically the same. In all these transplantations they have not once taken on the character of the tissues of the animal in which they have grown, but have maintained their own individuality.
In the minds of some investigators, this power of endless growth strongly supports the theory that cancer is of parasitic origin. What gives cancer this inexhaustible vitality and this increasing virulence? Only life itself, they believe, could furnish such a stimulus; only in bacteria and parasitic organisms is anything found comparable with it. It is hardly worth while to treat in detail this vexed question. That cancer is contagious in the sense in which contagion is generally understood — that is, something readily transmissible through a microorganism from individual to individual — nobody at present believes; that, however, a microorganism may be present, and, in some obscure, complex, roundabout fashion, may find its way from the sick to the well, many leading authorities, such as Borrel.of the Pasteur Institute, and Dr. Harvey R. Gaylord, of the Gratwick Laboratory at Buffalo, think entirely probable.
The Question of Heredity in Cancer
Results recently obtained in experimental breeding, however, indicate that cancer is hereditary—at least in mice. In the whole perplexing subject there has probably been no more controversial topic than this. Families in which cancer seems abnormally prevalent are familiar facts of every-day life. Several of these apparently cancerous families, the most notable being the Bonapartes, have figured
in history. Napoleon himself died of cancer of
[pgbrk] BURTON J. HENDRICK 265
the stomach, as did his father, his brother Lucien, and his sisters Caroline and Pauline. Among human beings, however, cancer is so common that any large family is almost certain to have its victims. On the other hand, the fact that when cancer is common in a family it almost always takes the same shape in all sufferers — the cancerous Bonapartes, for example, all dying of cancer of the stomach — supports the popular idea that heredity is an important factor. Recent experiments at the Harvard Medical School, conducted by Dr. E. E. Tyzzer, tend to substantiate this impression.
Dr. Tyzzer found a female mouse with a large growing tumor and mated her with a normal healthy mouse. In a short time this couple had one hundred descendants, all of which were kept under close observation. It takes about five months for a mouse to reach maturity — reach the period, that is, when it becomes susceptible to cancer. Mortality among the young animals is high, and of this brood, one hundred strong, thirty-five died of common mice infections before attaining mature age. Of the sixty-five that reached the cancerous period, twenty developed natural tumors, of which they ultimately died. One in every three, in other words, fell victims to the mother’s disease. According to Dr. Bashford, of the British Cancer Institute, one out of every twenty-five hundred mice naturally develops cancer. Unquestionably the disease is far more common than this; but the frightful mortality among Dr. Tyzzer’s one hundred mice can be explained only on the grounds of heredity. That the descendants of this cancerous parent inherited the disease outright, that the cancer cell or possibly a cancer parasite was directly transmitted from mother to offspring, does not necessarily follow. The tuberculous children of tuberculous parents inherit, not the disease, but a constitution especially adaptable to it, and so these cancerous mice probably derive from their parent an in-creased susceptibility.
It was at the Buffalo Laboratory, under the direction of Dr. Gaylord and Dr. G. A. Clowes, that one of the most important modern discoveries concerning cancer was made. Because they believed that cancer was a contagious dis-ease, Drs. Gaylord and Clowes were led to investigate the question of immunity.
Does Nature Ever Cure Cancer?
Medical sciencehasnow establishedonefunda- mental fact: that, in practically all bacterial infections, the employment of drugs, as direct curatives, is virtually useless. No factor, extrinsic to the body itself, ever cured a human being of typhoid fever, diphtheria, tuberculosis,
or any other bacterial disease.* The really curative agency is this great physical power called immunity. This may be defined as the resistance manifested by the normal body to any extrinsic forces that seek to destroy it. The animal organism is not passive in the face of these attacks; when assailed, it rouses itself and brings against the invader powerful though hitherto quiescent forces. For every body that assails it from without, it produces an anti-body within; for every toxin evolved by the invading bacteria, it produces its anti-toxin. Though these forces in some shape always exist within us, it is only when the specific disease appears that they manifest themselves in useful form. Thus, when the diphtheria toxin assails us, the body in turn manufactures its diphtheria antitoxin to destroy it. If the patient recovers, these anti-toxins remain in the blood indefinitely — which explains why, when once we have rid ourselves of a specific contagious disease, we seldom contract it again. Now, medical science, in its attempts to cure these infections, aims merely to assist nature herself — to repeat artificially nature’s process. In many cases of diphthe'ria the afflicted body produces sufficient anti-toxins to destroy the disease, but in a large number of cases it fails, and death results. In order to assist nature in her work, the physician reinforces these anti-toxins with enormous quantities manufactured outside, usually in the body of a horse which has recovered from the disease, and whose blood therefore contains these properties. The modern method, that is, is to find out how nature herself cures the disease and then attempt to do the same thing artificially.
In the minds of those who believed that cancer Was contagious, the question naturally arose, Do the laws of immunity apply to it? When the cancer cell began its destructive work, did the human body lie supine and helpless, or did it attempt to throw it off? If so, did it ever succeed? In human cases, natural recoveries from cancer were hardly known; this did not necessarily imply that the body manifested no resistance to it. Thirty years ago, tuberculosis was regarded as hopelessly incurable; now we know that its cause is a specific microorganism; that the body manufactures a natural resistance against it; and that, if attacked properly at the right time, it can be cured. In other words, nature herself can cure tuberculosis; when human ingenuity discovers the mechanism that it uses, and evolves some way of applying it artificially, this affliction will cease to be a universal terror.
* The only apparent exceptions to this rule are the successful use of quinine in malaria and mercury in syphilis. These diseases, however, are caused, not by (vegetable) bacteria, but by animal parasites. 264 WHAT WE KNOW ABOUT CANCER
pensable to human life. In the large majority of cases, the unequal pressure upon the growing mass causes part of the cancer tissue to die, ulceration sets in, and the wound, like any other exposed wound, becomes infected with blood-poisoning bacteria. Cancer victims die, that is, not from any destructive toxin inherent in the cancer growth itself, but usually from toxemia.
Cancer Tissue Apparently Immortal
How tremendous is this capacity for growth the recent experiments on animals have for the first time made clear. In the early attempts there were only a small proportion of "takes.” Thus, the first experimenters failed because they used only one or two, or, at most, a dozen animals. But one of the important facts learned is that, in the first transplantations, only a few animals, even of the same species, are susceptible to these grafts. Sometimes only one mouse in a hundred can be inoculated. At the Imperial Cancer Institute in London, a primary tumor has been transplanted nearly four hundred times without being made to grow on a single mouse. But after a naturally growing cancer has been transferred from the first animal into the second, it can be transplanted much more readily into the third. Clinical observations long ago established the fact that any irritating interference with a cancer almost always stimulates its growth. In his earliest experiments Dr. Eoeb found that, by merely drawing a silk thread through a dormant or slowly developing tumor, he could transform it into a rapidly growing one. Cutting with a knife produced the same effect. This accounts for the commonly observed fact that, when extirpated cancers in human beings recur, they increase in size much more rapidly than the original growth.
In 1902 Professor C. O. Jensen of Copenhagen came into possession of a white mouse afflicted with a cancer on the mammary gland. He transplanted this into hundreds of other animals and sent them to all parts of the world — to Berlin, Frankfort, Paris, Rome, Tokio, London, New York, Boston, Philadelphia, and Buffalo. This tumor, which has been transplanted into hundreds of thousands of mice, has developed a most amazing virulence. It has been steadily growing for six years, and has already reached its one hundredth generation. Apparently nothing can stop it; from present indications it may be growing thousands of years hence. As long as it regularly receives soil and nourishment — that is, animals to grow upon — it is immortal. Several tons have already accumulated. When sve consider that two hundred mice can be in-
oculated from a piece no bigger than the tip of one’s finger, and that each of these two hundred can in turn be used to inoculate two hundred more, its possibilities of growth are seen to be measurable only by the infinite. A single inoculation, if transplanted as many times and into as many animals as possible, in a short time would consume, in its growth, all the earth’s nitrogen. In a single year, according to an ingenious mathematical computation, it would attain a bulk eight hundred and ninety times larger than the sun and fill a space that it would take light one hundred and five years to traverse. And the amazing thing is that the uncountable cells that would make up this mass would all be lineal descendants of the cancer cells first found upon the little Copenhagen mouse. The scientist who to-day places under the microscope a Jensen tumor from any of the numerous laboratories in which they are growing, will find the structure of the cells to be identically the same. In all these transplantations they have not once taken on the character of the tissues of the animal in which they have grown, but have maintained their own individuality.
In the minds of some investigators, this power of endless growth strongly supports the theory that cancer is of parasitic origin. What gives cancer this inexhaustible vitality and this increasing virulence? Only life itself, they believe, could furnish such a stimulus; only in bacteria and parasitic organisms is anything found comparable with it. It is hardly worth while to treat in detail this vexed question. That cancer is contagious in the sense in which contagion is generally understood — that is, something readily transmissible through a microorganism from individual to individual — nobody at present believes; that, however, a microorganism may be present, and, in some obscure, complex, roundabout fashion, may find its way from the sick to the well, many leading authorities, such as Borrel.of the Pasteur Institute, and Dr. Harvey R. Gaylord, of the Gratwick Laboratory at Buffalo, think entirely probable.
The Question of Heredity in Cancer
Results recently obtained in experimental breeding, however, indicate that cancer is hereditary—at least in mice. In the whole perplexing subject there has probably been no more controversial topic than this. Families in which cancer seems abnormally prevalent are familiar facts of every-day life. Several of these apparently cancerous families, the most notable being the Bonapartes, have figured
in history. Napoleon himself died of cancer of
[pgbrk] BURTON J. HENDRICK 265
the stomach, as did his father, his brother Lucien, and his sisters Caroline and Pauline. Among human beings, however, cancer is so common that any large family is almost certain to have its victims. On the other hand, the fact that when cancer is common in a family it almost always takes the same shape in all sufferers — the cancerous Bonapartes, for example, all dying of cancer of the stomach — supports the popular idea that heredity is an important factor. Recent experiments at the Harvard Medical School, conducted by Dr. E. E. Tyzzer, tend to substantiate this impression.
Dr. Tyzzer found a female mouse with a large growing tumor and mated her with a normal healthy mouse. In a short time this couple had one hundred descendants, all of which were kept under close observation. It takes about five months for a mouse to reach maturity — reach the period, that is, when it becomes susceptible to cancer. Mortality among the young animals is high, and of this brood, one hundred strong, thirty-five died of common mice infections before attaining mature age. Of the sixty-five that reached the cancerous period, twenty developed natural tumors, of which they ultimately died. One in every three, in other words, fell victims to the mother’s disease. According to Dr. Bashford, of the British Cancer Institute, one out of every twenty-five hundred mice naturally develops cancer. Unquestionably the disease is far more common than this; but the frightful mortality among Dr. Tyzzer’s one hundred mice can be explained only on the grounds of heredity. That the descendants of this cancerous parent inherited the disease outright, that the cancer cell or possibly a cancer parasite was directly transmitted from mother to offspring, does not necessarily follow. The tuberculous children of tuberculous parents inherit, not the disease, but a constitution especially adaptable to it, and so these cancerous mice probably derive from their parent an in- creased susceptibility.
It was at the Buffalo Laboratory, under the direction of Dr. Gaylord and Dr. G. A. Clowes, that one of the most important modern discoveries concerning cancer was made. Because they believed that cancer was a contagious dis-ease, Drs. Gaylord and Clowes were led to investigate the question of immunity.
Does Nature Ever Cure Cancer?
Medical science has now established one funda- mental fact: that, in practically all bacterial infections, the employment of drugs, as direct curatives, is virtually useless. No factor, extrinsic to the body itself, ever cured a human being of typhoid fever, diphtheria, tuberculosis,
or any other bacterial disease.* The really curative agency is this great physical power called immunity. This may be defined as the resistance manifested by the normal body to any extrinsic forces that seek to destroy it. The animal organism is not passive in the face of these attacks; when assailed, it rouses itself and brings against the invader powerful though hitherto quiescent forces. For every body that assails it from without, it produces an anti-body within; for every toxin evolved by the invading bacteria, it produces its anti-toxin. Though these forces in some shape always exist within us, it is only when the specific disease appears that they manifest themselves in useful form. Thus, when the diphtheria toxin assails us, the body in turn manufactures its diphtheria antitoxin to destroy it. If the patient recovers, these anti-toxins remain in the blood indefinitely — which explains why, when once we have rid ourselves of a specific contagious disease, we seldom contract it again. Now, medical science, in its attempts to cure these infections, aims merely to assist nature herself — to repeat artificially nature’s process. In many cases of diphtheria the afflicted body produces sufficient anti-toxins to destroy the disease, but in a large number of cases it fails, and death results. In order to assist nature in her work, the physician reinforces these anti-toxins with enormous quantities manufactured outside, usually in the body of a horse which has recovered from the disease, and whose blood therefore contains these properties. The modern method, that is, is to find out how nature herself cures the disease and then attempt to do the same thing artificially.
In the minds of those who believed that cancer Was contagious, the question naturally arose, Do the laws of immunity apply to it? When the cancer cell began its destructive work, did the human body lie supine and helpless, or did it attempt to throw it off? If so, did it ever succeed? In human cases, natural recoveries from cancer were hardly known; this did not necessarily imply that the body manifested no resistance to it. Thirty years ago, tuberculosis was regarded as hopelessly incurable; now we know that its cause is a specific microorganism; that the body manufactures a natural resistance against it; and that, if attacked properly at the right time, it can be cured. In other words, nature herself can cure tuberculosis; when human ingenuity discovers the mechanism that it uses, and evolves some way of applying it artificially, this affliction will cease to be a universal terror.
* The only apparent exceptions to this rule are the successful use of quinine in malaria and mercury in syphilis. These diseases, however, are caused, not by (vegetable) bacteria, but by animal parasites.
[pgbrk] 266
WHAT WE KNOW ABOUT CANCER
The question now arose with cancer, Does nature herself ever cure this malady? If so, do the general principles of immunity apply to it? If we recover from it once, can we ever have it again? If nature does resist it, will it be possible to discover and apply the principles according to which nature works?’
Some Mice Can be Inoculated with Cancers, Others Not: Why?
In the early part of 1904, Dr. Gaylord, returning from a professional visit to Europe, brought back to this country two of Professor Jensen’s cancerous mice. Both died on the train between New York and Buffalo, but, from the cancer of one of them, several hundred mice were ultimately inoculated. At this time the tumor possessed high virulence, and, of every one hundred animals in which it was transplanted, sixty fell ill with the disease. Hitherto cancer investigators had all recorded the fact that a variable proportion of inoculated mice failed to develop tumors, but had attached no particular importance to it. When investigating the question of immunity, however, this initial circumstance might signify much. Here the experimenter injects one hundred mice of practically the same size, age, and breed with identically the same cancer cells; sixty contract the disease and forty do not. Why do these forty escape? Manifestly there must be an explanation; and this explanation must be found inside the animals themselves, inasmuch as the extrinsic conditions of the experiment were identically the same in the one hundred cases. Did the forty mice that went through the experiment unharmed develop a natural resistance that destroyed the cancer cells and prevented their growth? Only experiment could show; meanwhile it was sufficient to observe that precisely the same thing happened in diseases in which the laws of immunity appeared. If you injected pure cultures of diphtheria germs into a hundred children, a large proportion would take the disease, while a few would escape. The immunity of the latter, that is,' would be so powerful that the disease, even in its first stages, could make no headway.
In two years the Buffalo Laboratory inoculated 1,600 mice with the Jensen strain of tumor, and, of these, 1,250 proved absolutely resistant. The remaining 350 animals, in which cancers developed, were kept under the closest observation. For this purpose, the Buffalo experimenters evolved an ingenious method of keeping records. For each animal, in addition to elaborate statistics, a separate chart was made. This represented a series of outline figures of a mouse, and upon these, at different intervals,
were drawn in silhouette pictures giving the shape and exact size of the growing tumor Thus, after a few months, by glancing at these drawings, one saw precisely how the growth developed.
These records soon disclosed a momentous fact. While most of the cancers kept increasing in size until the animal died, a few clearly stopped growing, and others began to retrogress, in many cases diminishing to the vanishing-point. An inspection of the animals more graphically emphasized the same fact. In some the cancers grew as large as a hazelnut or an almond, and then slowly began to grow smaller. When they disappeared, they left absolutely no trace, not even a scar, and there was no recurrence. The skin and hair above the spot where this malignant tumor had been became white, glossy, and indistinguishable from the remaining surface. In the course of two years’ observation it developed that about twenty per cent of all mouse cancers ultimately disappeared. In a few cases these were fairly large; in most instances they were quite small, perhaps an eighth of an inch'in diameter. In other words, the smaller the tumor, the greater chance it had to become absorbed.
Cancer, in Principle, Is Not an Incurable ^Disease
What did this mean? Simply this: that cancer was a curable disease; the destructive cells did not necessarily mean death. Clearly nature herself knew how to rid the animal body of this malignant growth. The presence of the cancer cell started into life certain forces that arose in all their might and threw off the incubus. These simple experiments for all time took human cancer out of the class of incurable diseases. Precisely how nature accomplished this work is not known now, may indeed never be known; the method may be too complex for the human mind to grasp: but, in principle, the disease can be mastered.
And now investigators began to recall certain incidents that had for years spasmodically figured in medical literature, but which had never received serious consideration. These were the stories of so-called “spontaneous cures” of cancer in human beings. Now and then for the last two hundred years practitioners have arisen in their local medical societies and entertained their colleagues with marvelous tales. A patient had fallen ill of malignant cancer; the growth had rapidly progressed; it had been cut out, and recurred; it had been extirpated again, and again it had come back and the patient at last had been hopelessly returned to his friends to die. A few months
[pgbrk] BURTON J. HENDRICK
267
had passed, and lo! the cancer had entirely disappeared. The patient had become healthy and busy about his daily tasks. Learned medical societies usually howled down these picturesque anecdotes; the physician who countenanced them was discredited and sometimes absolutely disgraced. Dr. Gaylord’s mice, however, proved that many of these stories were unquestionably true. Ask Dr. James Ewing of Cornell, Professor Ehrlich, Dr. E. H. Bashford, or any of the leading cancer experts, this question: “Do human beings ever spontaneously recover from cancer?” and the answer is always a quiet “Yes.” Dr. Gaylord has ransacked medical literature for specific instances; and, amid a mass of more or less uncertain matter, has found fourteen cases concerning which there cannot be the slightest scientific doubt. Unquestionably there are thousands that are not recorded, and many more of which the medical profession, and even the patients themselves, know nothing.*
Perhaps Most of Us, at Some Time, Have Had Cancers The mice experiments show that most recoveries take place when the cancers are very small. Upon all of us little cancers may have appeared and then vanished without our knowledge. Especially would this be the case if they attacked the internal organs, as they constantly do. Autopsies show, by the presence of little atrophied nodules, that nearly all human beings at some time have had tuberculosis and, in many cases, have recovered; perhaps likewise we have nearly all of us had cancer. In the case of cancer, autopsies would not disclose this, were it a fact, for, when the cancers disappear, they leave almost no trace.
If You Have Cancer Once, and Get Well, You Will Not Have It Again Thus nature, in cancer as in diphtheria, starts forces that sometimes rid the body of the disease. And Dr. Gaylord and Dr. Clowes showed that the parallel extended further; in cancer, also, these new resisting forces remained in the animal and protected it against a second attack. If you have cancer once, and recover from it, you will almost never have'it again! In other words, the great principle of immunity applies to this affliction as much as to measles, smallpox, and other contagious diseases. The animals in the Buffalo Laboratory that had spontaneously recovered were used for these
* For practical reasons it should be emphasized that the cancers which disappeared in these mice were those which had been inoculated. The disappearance of natural tumors, as indicated in the text, is a rare occurrence. Of course no human patient, in the early stages of cancer, should delay an operation in the hope that the tumor may disappear spontaneously.
further experiments, thirty mice that had spontaneously recovered being inoculated again. In these no tumors developed. Ten were inoculated a third time and still were adamant to the cancer cell. Recent experiments, while not weakening the general principle, have shown that immunity in cancer is not quite so constant as this. It is now found that a very small proportion of spontaneously recovered mice can be inoculated again; but that practically all that survive this second inoculation are proof against a third. Even in contagious diseases the immunity principle does not always work, instances not being uncommon in which one person may have the same disease twice in the same year.
This Buffalo demonstration of cancer immunity was so revolutionary that the medical world did not readily accept it. Dr. E. H. Bashford, the English expert, officially published his disbelief in the accuracy of the observations, and explained in detail how Dr. Gaylord had made the mistake. The so-called regressing cancers, he said, were not cancers at all; they were merely little ulcerous swellings caused by the needle with which the inoculations had been made. In a few months, however, practically all the cancer laboratories in the world — including that of Dr. Bashford — had repeated the Buffalo experiments and confirmed them.
Immunity in Cancer Not the Same as in bacterial Diseases
Clearly there was immunity in cancer; but was it of the same nature as that which exists in bacterial diseases? In these latter infections the molecules that destroy the destructive bacteria and their poisons exist in the serum, or the liquid part of the blood. Medical science cures diphtheria, dysentery, spinal meningitis, and sometimes tetanus by injecting the serum of an animal that has recovered from the disease. The action of this serum is constant and well understood. It degenerates the bacteria in the diseased body, sometimes destroys them outright, and prepares them for final extermination within the white blood corpuscles. Does the serum of the recovered cancer patient have a similar effect upon the cancer cells? In order to answer this question, Dr. Gaylord injected the serum of spontaneously recovered mice into animals with large growing cancers. The first cases promised well, but subsequent experiments, in this country and in Europe, have not yielded similarly encouraging results. The leading investigators do not now believe that these immune properties are present in the serum. The immune serum does not act upon the cancer cell as does the immune serum in a bacterial disease; that is, it does not destroy the
[pgbrk] 268
WHAT WE KNOW ABOUT CANCER
cancer cell or have much appreciable influence upon its growth.
No, natural protection and normal resistance against cancer exists, but it is different from anything known. The most trifling circumstances frequently inhibit the growth of the cancer cell. How transplanted tumors grow only in animals of the same species, and how a transplantation cannot be made from a white rat to a gray rat, and vice versa, has already been described. Moreover, in many cases cancers can be transplanted from one mouse only to another mouse of the same color and species and living in the same locality. Thus it has been found that Berlin white mice will take tumors that have grown on other Berlin white mice, but that Christiania white mice will not. These and other facts make it clear that, while a definite immunity has been established, it is something more delicate, more subtle, more illusive than anything hitherto known.
To the lay mind, the demonstration of immunity in cancer would seem an added indication that the disease must be contagious. According to the scientist, however, this does not necessarily follow. The point involves too many technicalities for discussion in this place; it is well known, however, that immunity reactions exist toward other extrinsic forces than microbic infections.
Animals Can be Vaccinated Against Cancer
When the law according to which this immunity works is discovered, the solution of the cancer problem will be finally in hand. Meanwhile, though the things learned so far are of the utmost importance, they cannot yet be put to practical use. Thus Ehrlich has demonstrated, as a principle, that animals, and probably human beings, can be vaccinated against cancer. He inoculates a mouse with a weak strain, a new tumor grows, and in the majority of cases it retrogresses. The mouse is then proof against inoculation with more malignant strains. The difficulty, however, is that, in order to secure protection, an original tumor must develop, and, in a small proportion of cases, this does not regress, but becomes malignant and kills the animal. If we used this system of vaccination with men and women, therefore, we should kill a considerable percentage of all those treated.
Dogs Can be Cured of Cancer
Though we cannot cure cancer in human beings, we can cure it in dogs. Among these animals, a particular cancerous growth, known technically as a lymphosarcoma, is a virtual scourge. It is especially prevalent among high-
bred animals,— aristocratic bulldogs, pet spaniels. and the like,— though also frequent among common breeds. Though not infectious in the technical sense, it has a certain analogy to infectious disease, which fact has led Dr. Bashford, the English expert, to deny that it is a cancer at all. All the leading Ger-
man, French, and American investigators totally disagree with him; microscopic examination, as well as its method of growth and transplantation, clearly demonstrates its cancerous nature. Dr. James Ewing, Professor of Pathology at Cornell University, has studied this tumor thoroughly, and definitely proved that it is a cancer. It was at the Loomis Laboratory, through experiments conducted by Dr. S. P. Beebe and Dr. George W. Crile, of Cleveland, that its curability was demonstrated.
At these experiments nine dogs in succession were cured of malignant growths and restored to normal health. The experimenters accomplished this result simply by transfusing into the diseased animals the blood of other dogs that were demonstrated to be immune to this type of cancer. They inoculated a considerable number of dogs; in some the tumor developed and in others it failed to do so. The latter were therefore regarded as resistant to the disease. After the growth had gained marked headway and the patients manifested nearly all the symptoms of cancer in its last stages, practically all the blood in their bodies was drained off. In its place was transfused the blood of animals which had proved resistant to inoculation. In, nine out of ten cases the sick dogs got well; their tumors entirely disappeared, their condition became normal, and their own blood could then be used to effect similar cures. These experiments seem to indicate that, while the immune properties in cancer are not found in the serum when it is separated from the blood, they may be found when the whole body of the blood is used. Another explanation is that the blood of the diseased animal contained nourishment especially adaptable to the cancer cell, and that when this was withdrawn, the cancer cell was virtually deprived of its food. On the other hand, the blood of the second animal furnished no nourishment to the cancer, as evidenced by the fact that, after the inoculation of the growth, it failed to develop. When this blood, therefore, was transfused into the body of the diseased dog, it supplied wholesome nourishment to his normal tissues, but absolutely none to the cancer cells, which consequently atrophied and disappeared.
For dogs afflicted with this particular tumor science has thus discovered that great medical
[pgbrk] BURTON J. HENDRICK 269
desideratum— an actual cure for cancer. In the course of the writer’s visit to the Buffalo Laboratory, a large, fine, valuable English bulldog was brought in fearfully afflicted with this disease; the treatment was at once begun, and in a few weeks he will unquestionably be sent back entirely well. Whether dogs suffering from other forms of malignant tumor can be similarly cured is not known, inasmuch as this lymphosarcoma is the only type with which they can be inoculated. It is impossible to repeat the experiment on mice, because their veins and arteries are so small and delicate that blood transfusions cannot be made. With human beings the reproduction of the conditions of the experiment is absolutely impossible. We should be compelled to bring together two individuals, one suffering from a particular type of cancer and one who had spontaneously recovered from identically the same affliction. For practical purposes it would be impossible to accomplish this, and the experiments, therefore, outside of their practical importance in restoring suffering dogs to health, are interesting chiefly for the new light which they shed upon the general problem, and for the additional demonstration that cancer, in itself, is not incurable.
All the facts described above, indeed, have placed the question upon an entirely new footing. Medical science is now on tiptoe in the face of this problem. Everything is expectation. The important facts already learned have only stimulated the desire for more. After finding out so many things, it is not likely that
experimental science has reached its limit. No new fact about cancer would now surprise the medical world. No one has yet succeeded in assimilating all these new facts, in placing them in their proper sequence and wringing from them the great generalization that will yield the secret. But then, the experimental science of cancer is really less than ten years old. This malady is by no means so mysterious to the present generation as were the common contagious diseases to our grandfathers. It was not until that wonderful genius, Louis Pasteur, brushed away the superstitions and absurdities of three thousand years and showed the cause of these infections, that modern medical science and modern sanitation began. That some similarly penetrating mind — perhaps it is at work even now in some obscure pathological laboratory — will penetrate the meaning of all the recently discovered facts is the general expectation. The age-long pessimism has disappeared. Scientists now know that, in the usual sense of the term, cancer is not contagious. They know that heredity plays an important part in its development. Above everything else, they know what, ten years ago, they would hardly have dared to imagine: That cancer is not necessarily an incurable disease; that animals and human beings have it and spontaneously get well. They know that nature has her own method of curing it, that the great principles of immunity are applicable to it, and that underlying all these facts is some broad general law which, when unearthed, will bring relief to hundreds of thousands of sufferers.
[pgbrk] LILLIE
B Y
HARRIS MERTON LYON
ILLUSTRATIONS BY W. GLACKENS
IN a certain part of the swampy country of southern Missouri we used to gather each November, some ten or twelve of us, because of the excellent shooting there. Duck abounded through the crisp marshes,— teal and mallard and canvasback and wood-duck,— quail, and plenty of cottontail rabbits. We were very cozy, with our long tramps by day and our log fires by night. We practically took possession of an old hotel (called Miller’s Rest), brought down our own whiskies and liqueurs and cigars from the city, and gathered every evening around our smoking game dinners for a jovial meal and a long, intimate talk afterward. Every member of this little hunting club was happy. The brisk air, the eagerness of the hunt, the tension of muscles, the clean breeze in our eyes and ears all day out in the open, brought back upon us — we were, mostly, middle-aged men — a sort of boyishness. In the evenings, therefore, we relaxed. Sometimes we drowsed, from having been in the wind. Oftener we chatted about this and that, a whim, an inconsequential affair, a woman or two, a certain vintage, a good shot, a bad shot, ... a story. Such stories! Sometimes the Judge, who wore a neat purple corduroy coat and parted his hair every morning before setting out with his shotgun, would tell of an amusing case tried before him; sometimes the Doctor, a loutishly built and dressed man with a heart of gold, gave us^ glimpses into human life such as physicians alone obtain. Sometimes one, sometimes another spoke, idly, at random, over the cigars.
Well, one night the girl who worked in the hotel brought in our coffee, and as she swung easily out of the door with the tray under her arm, Norrbin looked after her intently. Norr-bin is described in a word — ten words. Swede, soldier of fortune, forty-four, swordsman, crack shot, friend of Oom Paul, Captain of Obaldia’s guard, Paris agent of the Terrorists — and so on. Clean-cut, decent . . . and, after all
that, bashful!
The Doctor noted the keen glance. “That kind is a nice, stupid kind of woman,” he said idly, “who moves safely through a stupid girlhood to a stupid marriage. All happy and nice and safe.”
“Does she?” asked the Swede, quickly. “Listen to me, then.” And he told this story:
This girl reminded me of a girl. Her name was Lillie.- That is all I know. No, indeed, I am not digging up one of my own lost romances. But — you said something about this girl here being happy. Happy, you said. And so I am eager to tell you about the girl named Lillie.
This happened when I was investigating sociological conditions — in Massachusetts. I was working then under a State commission on immigration. I have seen some sights there — and that means a great deal; for 1 have traveled this world thoroughly, and I am a Swede. Swedes, you may not know, are very moody and introspective. They get it from their
snow and mountains and frost.
Well, I was in Fall River, where they have cotton mills. Almost everybody there works, works hard, very many, many hours a day, as many hours as the law will let them. The father of a family works in the mills, the mother, the sons, the daughters — every one except the babies. Sometimes it is a great deal of trouble to take care of the babies at home and to work in the mills at the same time. But somehow it is done, and the world wags on, and you and I go shooting.
Almost all the people there are foreigners — Portuguese, and so on. Oh! A little bit of
everything. That’s how I came to be there
with my sociological census and my fountain-pen and my questions. Knock on a door, pry in, ask questions. I was a fascinated busybody. Sometimes I would laugh with these people — generally only an old man or a very young girl tending a baby was about the house
270
[pgbrk] “we gathered every evening around our smoking game dinners for a jovial
MEAL AND a LONG, INTIMATE TALK AFTERWARD ”
— and sometimes I would bite my lip and think hard, very hard, as I came away. It was peculiar work for a man of guns and sabers!
Well, late one afternoon I knocked at the door of a flat. The door was opened slowly and in a very trembling fashion by a broken-down old man. He did not tremble in fear. It was more as if he had lost the direction of his muscles. Except for a baby girl in a chair, he was alone. His name was Jansen — Sigurd Jansen. He was a Swede, of course, and we talked in Swedish. How many in his family? His wife, the baby, two little sons, and a daughter. Any dead? No. Any ill with tuberculosis? No. How many wage-earners? All, except himself— and the baby. They worked in “the mills,” at one task and another. His daughter Lillie was a weaver who made ten dollars a week. He, too, had worked there . but he had broken down and now could do nothing. Fortunately for him and the baby, all were making good wages. Lillie was doing especially well.
It is peculiar, my friends, that the men in these families generally “break down,” as they
call it, first of all. The mother, in spite of being weakened by child-bearing, seems to be able to endure longer. In fact, these men move in a certain definite line through life. You can figure them mathematically. It is pitiful. It is like plotting a curve in calculus. You can easily plot the curve of the poor man’s life! It is ascending in his youth from poverty; when he marries, it climbs still higher, for his wife is always a wage-earner herself, you see. They get so that they can live in comparative comfort. Then comes the first child. The curve of this man’s life begins its downward bend there. Gradually, very gently. But the next child, and the next, and the next — they have a regular rabble of children, these people! — carry him farther down into penury. For a while, when his children grow up, they support him and his wife. Then they begin to have troubles of their own,— old age, misery, starvation. . . . There you are! And this
law, this curve, works steadily. You can get from the tables a grand percentage on it. It is very interesting.
Old Jansen was glad to talk his language with a stranger, and so he invited me in. I
271
[pgbrk] 272
LILLIE
call him old. He could not have been more than fifty; yet his back was palsied, his hands were cramped, his eyes as expressionless as an absinthe-drinker’s. He looked at me as if he were very’ weary, and dreaming, and sad. When I spoke of Stockholm, the boat from Hull, the mountains up in the Lapland country, he smiled, but he smiled as if somebody had said a very bitter thing to him which could no longer hurt him.
“ 1 am quite content here,” he said very hesitatingly, “if things go on as they are and we all stay well. But if any one should get sick! These doctor bills!”
It was Lillie this and Lillie that in that house. So I found out, in fifteen minutes. The meals, the mending, the boys’ lessons . . . you know. One of these lads was
fourteen; the other twelve. One earned four dollars a week; the other two and a half. You would have smiled if you had sat and listened. Mention the name of a Jansen, and in the next breath you got the wages he made! Well, it was a very important point to the old man with the broken back.
I assure you, I did not smile.
That was on a Saturday night, when they all brought their wages home. 1 was introduced around. It is an odd sight, these Saturday nights of the poor.
The mother sat at the table, with the lamp near by. She put on a pair of cheap spectacles.
Without a word each child came up and placed his wages in her hand. She spreads it out on the table, if there are nickels and pennies to be counted.
Then she gives back to each a little pocket money. That is all, you see, that each worker gets out of his week’s work . . .
that, and a roof over his head. It is very primitive, isn’t it?
Patriarchal with the mother as patriarch. But only in this way can the home
survive; and the home is the all-important thing, after all. Isn’t it? Mrs. Jansen made six dollars. Lillie proudly stepped up — just such a looking girl as the one that went out that door — and put her ten dollars in the pool. The boys laid down six dollars and a half. A fortune! A Golconda, believe me. Twenty-two dollars and a half a week, and only five people and a baby to support. No wonder that every now and then Lillie got a new waist, or a neck-rib-bon, or a pair of shoes. That night we had a Swedish punch in celebration. And I went out and bought beer, and a fine cigar for the old man, and candy, and a baby’s rattle. I tell you truthfully it was very, very pleasant indeed.
All except one thing. I had a word or two
with Lillie, aside. She said: "It has been a
great deal of fun to-night. But I am beginning to be a very unhappy woman.”
Then my work took me elsewhere, and I
came back . . . later ... in the
spring. The old man was alone again with the baby: sitting by the open window, looking out. He did not move. He cried, “Come in!” when I knocked. When he recognized me, he broke into Swedish greetings, and then he sat silent again, looking out of his window. I did not know what to say, to take up our friendship where it had left off. Old men and old women, you know, are so imperturbable. It is hard to break through them into their hearts; they seem strangers at once, even if you leave for but a few moments. I think they must live in a strange country, these old people.
Finally Jansen began of his own accord. “It is spring,” he murmured. . . . “Spring!
I suppose that is it.” Then he looked up.
“ Lillie wants to get married,” he said, very simply.
I waited a moment, wondering keenly if he
“THE GIRL ..SWUNG OUT OF THE DOOR
WITH THE TRAY UNDER HER ARM ”
[pgbrk] "WITHOUT A WORD EACH CHILD CAME UP AND PLACED HIS WAGES IN HER HAND"
would bring in right there that subject which was all-important to him; and he did. “We would lose her wages,” he remarked. He twirled one thumb against the other very gravely, intent upon his nails, it seemed. But he really was a sweet-hearted man, and his thoughts were elsewhere.
“Who can blame her, Norrbin?” he went on. “In the spring? Heh? The spring . . .
youth . . . love.” His Swedish was full
of melody to hear. “How the gladness runs through young things in such a month as this! I have watched her ... I, her old father . . . here in this room. How she sucks in
the air and trembles! How she broods! How she is sad! She is a Swede, Norrbin. It is a fine thing to be a Swede, and young, and feel the spring. That is what is the matter with our Lillie.”
“Who is the fellow?” I asked.
“You cannot stop her. Not in a month like this.— He is a teamster.— This is the time of the heart, of a young girl’s heart.— A nice fellow, too. He makes seven dollars and a half a
week, a dollar and a quarter a day.— I was young once ... in Upsala. In Upsala it was that I fell in love, with my own Sophie here. And so I have told Sophie over and over again,”— he nodded his head at me, stupidly, like a wise man,—“but she is bitter. She will not hear of it. Hard work has made Sophie forget her own young days. We have not done as well as we thought we would do in this country, and that presses in on the heart . . . you know how. But I do not like
what Sophie is doing. I don’t.”
“What is Mrs. Jansen doing?” I said bluntly. “She is trying to frighten Lillie. I don’t like that. It will do no good, anyway. I tell you, it is the spring!” he shouted, in exasperation. “Who has a hand or a tongue or a law that can stop the spring in a human heart ? Heh?”
“A’law?” I said.
“Yes. She—Lillie doesn’t know anything, of course — Sophie tells her she will have her arrested if she marries Tom. You see, it is hard. We would only have twelve dollars and
273
[pgbrk] 274
LILLIE
a half each week, if she left us; well . . .
see? Sophie is what you might call desperate about it. That she may be, too,— twelve dollars and a half a week! And me a cripple, just like this. And Sophie getting older every day, and the boys a long way off from being any good to us. Sorrow and sorrow and sorrow! We bring them up to break our hearts and strip our home.” He turned to the window again.
"Something has happened that I want to tell you about, and ask your advice about,” remarked the old man. He took his pipe out of his mouth and wet his lips. “You remember the moonlight night? No? It was two nights ago. You should pay attention to moonlight nights, my son; they are very rare and very beautiful. Much more so than the days. If you were in love, now, you would have noticed that night. I never saw anything sweeter or softer. The whiteness was all hazy like a dream. It seemed to float up off the trees and the roofs out there into this window. It had something about it that seemed like a fairy tale. Beautiful! It reminded me of an old
boating-song my mother used to sing ”
And abruptly he broke off, crooning a bar of it — in Swedish, of course. His talk was always in Swedish, very simple, but very pleasant to me.
“Have you ever gone walking through the lanes with your sweetheart on a moonlight night, Norrbin? Do you recall how something moist gets into your eyes, and how your hands grow tender toward her? Yes. There was something of that in this white night I am telling you about. It was very, very soft and mild and gentle.
“Well, Lillie wanted to go walking with Tom that night. Oh, I do not blame her! Not I! But she came in here to put on her hat, and her mother forbade her to go.
“‘Why?’ asked my Lillie, very quick.
‘“Because it only makes things worse,’ answered Sophie. ‘You two cannot get married. If you go out on a night like this it will just make it harder for you to give each other up.’ Lillie stood straight, and her eyes slumbered like stars. She started to say something, but her mother went ahead quickly: ‘And you must give each other up. I won’t have it. You must.’
'"Must—must?’ said Lillie, her voice very hard.
“And Sophie answered: 'Don’t use’that voice to me, daughter. Obey.’
“‘Obey?’ asked Lillie, and she looked very queer to me; but I smoked my pipe and made no noise. ‘Obey?’ she said. ‘I will not obey.
Do you not think I am a woman, too? Am 1 to have no youth? No love? You had it. Am I to work and work — nothing but work — forever, as long as I can swing my arms? And you are my mother.’ Here my Lillie began crying. ‘Not as mother to daughter, but as woman to woman,— answer me, and tell me what right you have to take your love and deprive me of mine. It is because of the money, the money, the money that you do this. Well, I do not care for money. I want something that money cannot buy. I want it while I am young, I want it myself and now! I will work as hard as you have worked; and you know why you have worked so hard so gladly. It is because you are a woman who loved and who got what you wanted. So will I. . . . But first I must have what I want.
I have a right to some happiness, I think. 1 am not a weaving-machine. I am a woman, a woman nineteen years old. Don’t you forget that. Don’t you forget that.’
“Her mother was angry and crying and trembling all at once. What could I do? What she had said was true, all of it. And then, it is no use talking to women in a scene like that. Suddenly Sophie said very quietly: “‘Now, young lady, you shall hear my side.
I shall be very particular with you, young lady.
I shall not talk to you as a mother—if you want it so. 1 shall answer you “woman to woman,” and here is what I shall say to you in cold truth: Remember that I am a human being who has built up a home. A home, do you understand? All that I have to show for my years of work and worry is this home of ours, this roof over your head. Have you any idea how jealously I guard this home? No, you haven’t. You are nineteen years old. But you don’t know that I plan and skimp and scrape and save; and that 1 lie awake nights and that I work all day. You do know that 1 take all your money every Saturday night. You do know that I make you all to go without carfare and better clothes, make you sometimes when it hurts me very deeply to have to do it. You do know, and sneer at me for it, that I think all the time about “the money, the money, the money.” Yes, all this is true. Now, let me tell you why: You see that roof? I don’t want that roof to come down, and I am the one who holds the roof up in place! It depends upon me, me, me! Not upon you, nor your poor father, nor the little ones; but upon me. And do you think that I want to keep that roof there for my own miserable head? Do you think that I am selfish? If you do, you have no idea of what a woman will sacrifice for her home. Sacrifice! Yes.
[pgbrk] HARRIS MERTON LYON
275
And now here is the bitter pill for you to swallow, Lillie. Oh, my poor, dear, sweet little girl, I will even sacrifice you and your happiness to keep that roof there! Yes, that is the truth. I will do it — and not because I want to (you know that in your heart!), but because I must. You are but one in six of us. I must think of the other five! Day and night and night and day I must think of the other five. It is very hard to say this, but it is the only way I know. If you leave us, I am afraid that roof will fall; for I am getting older and making less
money every day, and it is a long time yet before the boys can help. Don’t you see now, Lillie?’
“That was the way my wife talked to her.
“But my Lillie held on like death: ‘I want my chance, though. You care for your home, of course. You ought to. But I don’t. I want to begin my own home. Can you blame me? I have found a man, and he is a good man and he loves me. He is young and I am young. Haven’t I a right to his love? It seems to me I have. It seems to me very natural that I should go out and build a roof of my own. And, after me, some day the boys there. Even the baby there some day. That is the way the world goes on. I must, I must have my Tom.’ She stopped and cried a little,
and then she went on: ‘Think what it means to me, working there in those miserable mills all day, day after day, to have somebody love me! To have somebody whisper to me that I am pretty, that my lips are sweet, that my hair is soft! Oh, you can understand if you will only remember! Think what it means to me to have somebody bring me little gifts — think of my having presents! To have somebody say nice things about my dress and neck-ribbons! To have somebody take me places — to picnics, to dances, where I can hear music!
Do you think I can give these things up? Remember, I am very, very tired of work.’
“Then Lillie did a remarkable thing: sne called her mother by her name —Sophie! She said: ‘“I am going out with Tom now, Sophie. We will talk all this over later to-night!’ She slammed the door behind her.
"My wife looked at me and said: ‘You heard? You know what it means?
She is a grown woman to-night.’”
The old man relit his pipe and looked at me a long time.
“Now, I want to ask your advice. What are we to do?”
Believe me, my friends, I was — as you call it—“stumped.” So I said: “The women will
‘THAT NIGHT WE HAD A SWEDISH PUNCH IN CELEBRATION
[pgbrk] 276 LILLIE
“HER MOTHER FORBADE HER TO GO”
work it out, somehow. Lillie will probably do as she thinks best, I should imagine.”
He nodded as if he agreed with me. “When you come back again we shall probably know.” Well, Lillie married. The old man told me: "She came in to see me, her old father, late one afternoon here. I was sitting in this very chair, just like this. Her mother was out at the stores for a long time. Lillie ran across the floor and fell on her knees with her head against my breast. She was so happy! She was so happy that I cried and she cried and we kissed each other and sat still. Then she laid three dollars and a half in my lap and said:
‘“I am going to bring that to you, old daddy, just for yourself, every week. Tom and 1 between us make seventeen dollars and a half. It is fine! The first money I ever had! He gives me his wages every Saturday.’ “ But it was not that that she had come to see me about. She had come to set herself straight with me, her father. She had come, you might say, to confess.
‘“I just had to, daddy,’ she said. ‘ It may have been the moonlight. It may have been Tom. It may have been something inside of me that was pulling. I would turn and look into his eyes, in the shadow, daddy, and all at once my blood would rush through me, and
I would close my eyes. When he put his arms around me and kissed me, I gave in. I promised. I forgot everything that mother had said. I forgot this old home of ours. I took his face in my hands, I ran myfingers through his hair. It was sweet, oh, so sweet, daddy! — and so wonderful!’ "I told her yes, I knew all about it. You know what I said to you, Norrbin, about nightsIikethat? Heh? So, soon after, she went away — back to her own home. Tom has been to see me, too. They are really happy. After a while they will come when Sophie is here, and it will be all rightagain.” “ I hope so,” I said to Jansen.
“ For a while, for a while,” he said, patiently. “When they begin to have their own children, though, that will make a difference. Then their own troubles will come, and they will have to look after themselves. Then our troubles will come thicker. Who knows where we will go? What our end will be?”
It was true. Not long after the old man had to take to his bed with some sort of trouble in his back. The dreaded doctor bills! And the older boy twisted his foot and could not work. One little thing after another like that. Finally, in time, Lillie had her first baby. “Her own troubles had come.” The old Jansen family moved somewhere else where the rent was cheaper. That is all. Except that Lillie sent me a Christmas card when I was in New York. She was very proud of her baby, it said.
Norrbin finished in a somewhat excited manner and looked around.
“A very interesting, perhaps pitiful case,” said the Doctor. “ But not a case for philanthropy.”
“Philanthropy? No,” announced the Judge confidently. “That Jansen case is being taken care of by a higher philanthropy — I mean the philanthropy of Nature herself. There are too many such families.”
[pgbrk] THE STORY OF A REFORMER’S WIFE
AN ACCOUNT OF THE KIDNAPPING OF FREMONT OLDER, THE SHOOTING OF FRANCIS J. HENEY, AND THE SAN FRANCISCO DYNAMITE PLOTS
BY MRS. FREMONT OLDER
ILLUSTRATED WITH PHOTOGRAPHS
WHAT was the motive of the San Francisco Graft Prosecution? has been repeatedly asked. Why was it started? Was it a business revenge of Rudolph Spreckels? For the reason that I have been in the closest possible association with the investigation from its beginning, and have lived through the fever and throb of its successes and failures, I have been asked to write what I know of its history.
When, in 1901, Eugene Schmitz was elected Mayor on the Union-Labor ticket, little was known of him save that he was the well-looking leader of an orchestra. Fremont Older, the managing editor of the Bulletin, however, shared in the common belief that the new Mayor’s political manager, Abraham Ruef, for years had walked the tight rope of anti-social crime, and had approached close to the gates of San Quentin. Even at that time Ruef’s fellow-conspirator in substituting an heir was serving a term in prison. Although during the campaign the Bulletin did not support Schmitz, Mr. Older thought kindly of him and desired to see him make himself a national figure as a Union-Labor Mayor. The editor, having a slight acquaintance with Schmitz, sent word to him by a friend that he could not afford an alliance with a corrupt force like Ruef, and warned the new Mayor that Ruef would bring about his ultimate political ruin. Schmitz’s answer was to write a letter to the newspapers, publicly proclaiming Ruef his agent. To announce this was to hoist the black flag of the buccaneer.
At first it was little, squalid graft — blackmailing gamblers and the nether world; one could feel graft, breathe it, do all but see and prove it. The town knew everything was for
sale; the town cynically smiled; Ruef, they said, was a smart fellow. The public prints were silent. Mr. Older, however, was not silent, and San Francisco smelt the first smoke of the Graft Prosecution when the Bulletin attacked Schmitz and Ruef.
With the Mayor’s reelection, in 1903, by an increased majority, -he obtained control of all the commissions; hitherto these had been held by ex-Mayor Phelan’s appointees. Now the large graft began; the saloons sold “municipal” whisky; Chinatown paid heavy tribute to the police; the administration profited from the earnings of the women of the dives. Mr. Older, believing these to be the facts, not only daily criticized Schmitz and Ruef, but as early as this he had the idea of bringing about a Grand Jury investigation. He was not long, however, in discovering that this body, as drawn in 1904, consisted of Schmitzes and Ruefs. The boss was master of the many ways in which the slips of paper on which the names were written could be juggled. Nevertheless, Mr. Older determined that for once the Grand Jury should consist of good citizens. Mr. Symmes, the president of the Merchants’ Association, was asked by the editor to accompany him to the court-room where the drawing was to take place. The two men stood over the box containing the written names and took care that they were not gummed together. The result of the morning’s work was the Andrews Grand Jury. It was a group of men ready to do their duty; but the District Attorney was spineless and complaisant.
Frequently the Bulletin charged that the Chinese gamblers were bribing the police to secure immunity from arrest; the police commissioners back-fired the attack by summoning Mr. Older before them for the purpose of
277
[pgbrk] 278
THE STORY OF A REFORMER’S WIFE
investigating his source of information. Although the editor induced Sergeant Ellis of the Chinatown squad to confess and to lay thirteen hundred dollars blackmail money upon the desk in the Grand Jury room, no indictments could be obtained.
The Bulletin was becoming too active for the mental tranquillity of Ruef and Schmitz. Mr. Crothers, the proprietor, and Mr. Older received letters threatening their lives. One evening, as Mr. Crothers was passing through an alley on his way to the Bulletin office, he was waylaid, felled to the ground, and left for dead; this was the first casualty in the battle for good government.
Intimidation and violence, however, could not alter the policy of the Bulletin. The following day both Mr. Crothers and Mr. Older engaged body-guards; in an editorial they announced that the fight would go on until an honest government was installed in the city. Once or twice Mr. Older met Rudolph Spreckels, with whom he was slightly acquainted; they were bright moments; outside of the Bulletin office Mr. Spreckels was the first thoroughly fighting-mad citizen Mr. Older had met.
The editor watched every move of the administration. Early in 1905 the police commissioners withdrew the licenses from the French restaurants. At the end of a week, for an esoteric reason, the licenses were regranted. Mr. Older called on the proprietor of Marchand’s.
“Pierre, tell me,” the editor began, "why the police commissioners turned a somersault?”
Pierre’s smile was one of revelation. “ I was very seeck, monsieur. I send for ze docteur. Ruef is a very good docteur. I am well.”
Mr. Older in the Bulletin interpreted the esoteric reason accurately; it was ten thousand dollars. Ruef afterward confessed it. Schmitz was tried and condemned to prison for it. Notwithstanding the abundance of proof of this clear case of official extortion, at that time no other newspaper published a word concerning the occurrence.
Early in 1905 Arthur McEwen, who was widely known and admired on the Pacific Coast, returned from New York to utter in the columns of the Bulletin his protest against corruption.
II
An election was approaching. Ruef and Schmitz hoped to capture the city for the third time. Now Ruef saw big goals; it should be Governor Schmitz; it should be United States Senator Ruef. That editor, yelping of his crimes, disturbed the boss’s dream. Ruef determined that the Bulletin should not be sold
or distributed; it should not exist. To this end he organized a band of thugs who called themselves newsboys. Carriers were assaulted; they afterward voted for Schmitz. Merchants were struck with stones and bricks for buying the paper; they afterward voted for Schmitz. Windows were broken in the Bulletin office. Horses were unhitched from the delivery-wagons. Men were maimed for life. The police looked the other way. Mr. Older was followed to the very door of the Palace Hotel by a howling mob which threw sticks and stones at him. The deputy sheriffs who were called in looked the other way. Some old women at length ventured to hold the paper up in the streets. They alone were able to dispose of a few copies, but even purchasers were assaulted. When the Bulletin organized a body of men of its own, there was daily fighting in the streets; but only in this way, after a loss of many thousands of dollars, was the paper allowed to continue in circulation.
One day in the summer of 1905 Mr. Spreckels indicated to Mr. Older that he had a remedy to suggest, and the two men came together. “My idea,” said the capitalist, "is to organize fifteen representative men, taken from all walks of life, into what might be called an unarmed vigilance committee. Their ostensible duties shall be to see that public moneys are honestly expended. In pursuing the investigations necessary, all this graft that you are writing about will be uncovered.”
For four years, unaided, Mr. Older had been fighting for decent government. When Rudolph Spreckels made this suggestion, it was like a helping hand held out to one sinking at sea. "Good,” the editor answered; "let’s start now to select the men.”
Later these enthusiasts were to know their San Francisco better than they did in the summer of 1905; but they set to work and compiled an array of imposing stuffed respectabilities. At that time, both artlessly believed that large property-holders in a community would have a deeper interest in the administration of affairs than men not on the assessment roll. Rudolph Spreckels was then but thirty-three. He had the beautifpl self-confidence of a young emperor. "I’ll see these men myself,” he said. He did.
Mr. Older broke the silence that followed by asking a fortnight later over the telephone, "What has become of our committee?”
"Not one man would serve,” Spreckels answered. “They said they couldn’t afford to mix up with anything that would hurt business.” Even at this early time, what San Francisco has since denominated the "higher-up” de-
[pgbrk] MRS. FREMONT OLDER
279
fined itself, but neither the editor nor the millionaire classified the genus.
It had been a pleasant two weeks of vain hope; Mr. Older went back to the old fight. After all, there seemed no way of bringing about a new order of things except at the polls. The editor had no doubt that the fire in his brain would become a general intellectual conflagration. He saw a city of indignant citizens who were only awaiting an opportunity to cleanse the municipal government. In order that no minds should be led by party loyalty into diminishing the vote against Schmitz, Mr. Older now took up the task of effecting coalition between the Republican and Democratic tickets. Because Mr. Older was not a spoilsman, his request had weight. He urged the Democratic leaders to accept the Republican candidate for Mayor. When they yielded, he felt that the election was carried. Now, at last, he would see the end of the reign of graft. Ruef himself evidently believed his organization to be in great danger. Several times he hired halls and theaters, packed them with his hangers-on, and for hours heaped vile abuse upon Mr. Older, Mr. Crothers, and every decent citizen who was opposing him. A small subsidized paper published his harangue in full; Ruef paid to have a copy of the issue laid on every door-step in San Francisco.
The bitterly contested campaign of 1905 closed one Saturday night with a large political meeting held in Mechanics’ Pavilion; twelve thousand men and women were present. I recall only one speech of the evening; it was made bv a man who was a stranger to most of those present — a spectacled man with a boyish grin and a peculiar nasal drawl now familiar to Californians. “When you are ready,” the speaker closed, “send for me. I’ll come back here and put Abe Ruef in San Quentin.”
“Who is he?” was asked. “Who is he?”
“It’s Frank Heney,” came the answer. “ He’s been prosecuting the Oregon land thieves.”
As yet Mr. Heney was acquainted with none of the forces that were to bring him to San Francisco.
On election day victory or defeat is felt in the air. In the streets and in the big shops, which I intentionally visited the following Tuesday, I heard nothing but “Schmitz.” My confidence was shaken by the frequent utterance of the name. About half-past five I went to the Bulletin editorial rooms. There I encountered none of the currents of contest, the heat of struggle that are usually sensed in a newspaper office when election returns are coming in. There were two or three shadowy figures of reporters in the dark local room. Arthur McEwen was with Mr. Older in his office.
“ Have you heard anything?” I asked.
Mr. Older is six feet two. His chair was leaning against the wall. His head was sunken, and he seemed short and crumpled.
“ It’s the worst defeat we ever had.”
“Don't you give up too soon?” was my question.
He pointed to the papers on his desk. “Look at those returns from the Western Addition!”
This portion of the town was the residence section of the arch-respectable, the wealthy; it had gone overwhelmingly for the boss’s candidate. Schmitz was no longer the Mayor of the poor. He belonged to the rich; they could buy him.
A man who can work alone four years for a hopeless cause is one to know to the bitterest what the defeat of the right, the triumph of the wrong, means. I recall that as we sat there in the twilight Mr. Older would not speak. Arthur McEwen said: “Fremont looks as if he had received a mortal wound. I wouldn't waste my time in this mud-hole of a San Francisco. California has been a railroad plantation too long.” Soon afterward Mr. McEwen did leave the paper and return to New York.
Some one came to say that Ruef supervisors had been elected.
“That’s good,” said Mr. Older bitterly; “they’ll loot the town. Now the people will get the kind of government they deserve: the worst the city has ever known.”
The reporters drifted away and did not hear or see when the victors, shouting, drunk, carried Ruef on their shoulders before the editorial rooms. A few hours later, about midnight, we and all those living at the Palace Hotel were awakened and warned out of the building. A Schmitz rocket of victory had set fire to a structure on the opposite side of the street. We packed some bags, and as we stood shivering, watching the firemen struggling to subdue the flames, it seemed a fit conclusion to the day.
During the fortnight of sick despair that followed, nothing concerning the administration was published in the Bulletin. The latest returns showed that the vote for Schmitz had fallen off in the laboring districts, but increased largely among the well-to-do.
“What is there I can say or do?” Mr. Older used to repeat. “It has all been gone over again and again in type of every size. San Francisco wants a corrupt government. Let her have-it. I can’t make a new people.”
III
But Mr. Older gained second breath. It was impossible for him to cease fighting. Now
[pgbrk] 280
THE STORY OF A REFORMER’S WIFE
he began in a new way; what was afterward termed the Graft Prosecution began. “I’ve decided, after all, that I’ve misjudged the people,” he said one day. “They really do want a good government. They simply haven’t believed me. I haven’t convinced them of the truth of what I have stated, but I’ll prove it to them in a court of law. Then the city will be a unit.”
“How will you set about it?”
“I’m going to Washington to ask Frank Heney to come here. He’s the only man who can save the situation. I’ll try to interest the President. Maybe he’ll allow Heney to drop his government work and help us out.”
His hope seemed improbable of fulfilment, but Mr. Crothers and I agreed that after such a long struggle Mr. Older needed a vacation. It was necessary that the greatest secrecy should be maintained concerning his mission; only Mr. Crothers and I knew where he had gone. In Washington the editor met Mr. Heney for the first time.
“You said in your speech last fall,” he explained to the prosecutor, “that if ever we wanted you in San Francisco to go after Ruef and Schmitz, you’d come. Although no one knows I’ve taken this trip to see you, I believe from a conversation I had last summer with Rudolph Spreckels that he’s as much interested in cleaning out San Francisco as I am. I think he and James D. Phelan will give money for a big investigation, if you’ll come out and conduct it.”
"I’ll be ready,” said Heney, “just as soon as I get these Oregon land-fraud cases off my hands, but I want William J. Burns to go with me. I am only a lawyer; Burns has marvelous capacity for digging up evidence. Besides, he’s absolutely honest.”
“How much money do you think an investigation like the*one necessary would cost?” asked Mr. Older.
“We should need to be able to count on a hundred thousand dollars,” Mr. Heney estimated.
Mr. Older made the acquaintance of Mr. Burns in the afternoon; now three of the forces of the Graft Prosecution had come together. In response to the editor’s statement of the purpose of his visit to Washington, Mr. Burns said, “I’ll go with Mr. Heney to San Francisco if it means that the bribe-givers as well as the bribe-takers are to be prosecuted. It’s very difficult to catch the big fellows, but extremely necessary for a thorough cleaning up.” Mr. Older gave the assurance, “We’re going after rich and poor — every one.”
“Then it’s agreed,” was Mr. Burns’ decision.
“I’ll come when I can get a release from the government.”
It was part of Theodore Roosevelt’s greatness as President that he looked through all the eclipsing pomp of his position straight out into the nation. Fremont Older had no need to tell the President that the respectable people, the church people, the wealthy people of San Francisco had reelected to office the Mayor who was notoriously living on the underworld; whose agents of corruption skulked in dark places; whose reception day at home was a pretext for the receipt of bribes. The President knew the full shame of it. “Yes,” he said, “Ruef and Schmitz are both scoundrels and should be in State’s prison. Heney and Burns are just the men to put them there.”
I V
When Mr. Older returned to San Francisco, the first person he went to see was ex-Mayor James D. Phelan, whose sense of civic duty never fails to respond to a call. Mr. Phelan, upon hearing what Mr. Older had done in Washington, said without hesitation, “We’ll raise the money.” Rudolph Spreckels was the second man Mr. Older visited. When he related his interview with Mr. Heney,— Mr. Spreckels had then never met the attorney with whom he was to be so intimately associated,— the millionaire rose from his chair.
“I’ll go into that. I’ll put my money into it.” Mr. Spreckels had gone to the window and was looking out. Now he turned round.
“ But I won’t put up a five-cent piece unless we reach for Herrin. It will all be money wasted unless we get that man who for years has been debauching the State.”
Mr. Herrin is the lieutenant of Mr. E. H. Harriman in California; some of his duties are occult.
“That’s a bargain,” promised Mr. Older. “We’ll go after Herrin, too.”
Rudolph Spreckels has been accused of guaranteeing the fund for the Graft Prosecution because of business rivalry with Patrick Calhoun, the indicted president of the United Railways. Mr. Spreckels gave this pledge of the money to Mr. Older four months before Patrick Calhoun bribed the supervisors. The crime was not committed until April, after the fire. This conversation occurred in the preceding December. Patrick Calhoun was merely an unexpected big fish caught in the net of the investigators.
Fearing lest a long time would pass before Mr. Burns would be permitted to come to San Francisco, Mr. Older now set about hastening
[pgbrk] MRS. FREMONT OLDER
281
the arrival of the Secret Service man; he went on a hunt for Federal graft. The editor knew of violations of the restriction law; Chinese women were being illegally landed. If the President could be rendered reasonably sure of this, Mr. Older felt that Mr. Burns would be ordered to San Francisco to investigate. Once in the city, the Secret Service man would be in a position to observe municipal conditions. The Bulletin engaged some detectives, who, with a talented reporter, Mr. Scott, were sent into Chinatown. After working several weeks they obtained sufficient evidence to warrant a Federal inquiry. Mr. Older went again to the White House.
“This is very important,” said Mr. Roosevelt, on looking over the evidence; “I’ll write Heney to-day."
On the editor’s return to San Francisco he found that the President had inclosed the report of the Bulletin detectives in a letter to Mr. Heney in which the prosecutor was requested to ask Mr. Burns to investigate Federal corruption. Shortly afterward two Burns men arrived. This was a big step toward the Graft Prosecution; in searching for the men who were landing Chinese women, the detectives found that Federal graft was intergrown with municipal rottenness.
Francis Heney came in January, and for the first time met Rudolph Spreckels, at a luncheon given by ex-Mayor James D. Phelan. The famous prosecutor formally promised Mr. Spreckels to return to San Francisco as soon as he should have completed his work in Oregon.
At this time knowledge of the embryotic investigation was closely guarded; not more than eight men in the United States were cognizant of it. In those days the character-sifting of the citizens of San Francisco had not begun. Too often the worthiness of associates had been insufficiently tested. So it happened that one of the little band of reformers confided to a close friend the purpose of the men thus in secrecy allied. Within twenty-four hours the information came straight to Mr. Older that Ruef knew of the intended inquiry; the railroad knew of it. The little boss, enmeshed in crime, was terror-stricken. Who the confidant was that turned informer is an interesting question. The answer is even more interesting: a justice of the Supreme Court of California. With this knowledge tucked away in the back of their heads, the members of the Graft Prosecution were not so astonished as was the country when the Supreme Court, on deciding that judicial notice could not be taken of the fact that Schmitz was Mayor of San
Francisco or that Ruef was its boss, turned them free.
The earthquake and the fire came. Sins were sponged out; brotherly love prevailed; every one was poor. It was the best day in the history of San Francisco. Schmitz was a good Mayor for a week. Ruef vanished from the public eye; but at the end of seven days he returned from his sham disappearance. While San Francisco was still burning, he trafficked in its ruins. Ashes and bricks were his auction-place. When the boss was appointed by Schmitz a member of the Committee of Forty, Rudolph Spreckels alone of that body of men resigned; Mr. Spreckels read in the act that the penitent Mayor had become a looter. That very day, in Fillmore Street, Fremont Older met Francis Heney for the first time since the 18th of April. The editor was publishing the Bulletin in Oakland; the prosecutor was without an office; but the resolution of these men had not gone into the flames. They went into a grocery store and, seated on cracker-boxes, they began to plan.
“We’d better go after those crooks,” said Mr. Heney. “How does Spreckels feel?”
“ I haven’t talked to him about it,” answered Mr. Older, “but I’m ready for business.”
“I wish you would see him,” said Mr. Heney, “and write me at Portland. I’m going up there to-morrow.”
When Fremont Older called on Rudolph Spreckels the following day, the capitalist seemed oblivious to the fact that he had lost millions in the fire; he was possessed with indignation that the Mayor, at this crisis, had dared give Ruef a place of honor. “I’ve just resigned from the Committee of Forty,” exclaimed Mr. Spreckels; “I won’t serve with Ruef. Schmitz’s appointment of him shows that both he and the Mayor are going on with graft. Our investigation is the only thing. Last summer I tried to get fifteen men, then ten, eight, six, three. Even that was impossible. Now I’ve decided to go it alone. I’ll raise the money myself. Where’s Heney?” “He wants me to write him your decision in Portland.”
“Well, tell him to come down here as soon as possible,” Mr. Spreckels said.
Among some telegrams I find this one:
Portland, Oregon, July 30, 1906.
Fremont Older,
The Bulletin, San Francisco.
Expect to be able to leave next Saturday night and reach city Monday morning. Will be sure to go at end of present trial. Have written.
Francis J. Heney.
[pgbrk] 282
THE STORY OF A REFORMER’S WIFE
Mr. Heney came. In the presence of Mr. Older, Rudolph Spreckels asked the prosecutor, “What will your fee be?”
Mr. Heney is not a rich man; he perhaps had not more than thirty thousand dollars at that time. His services were in demand by the Department of Justice. Had he continued in that work, to-day he would be worth at least one hundred thousand dollars. Yet his answer was: “I’ll put my time against your money. 1 passed all my boyhood in San Francisco. I like the place, and I owe that much to the old town.” s
“That’s very fine,” answered Mr. Spreckels. They parted. Mr. Heney returned to Portland; Mr. Spreckels went about raising the funds. William J. Burns arrived in September. There was pandemonium in the Ruef camp. When a criminal realizes that he is being watched by a Secret Service man,— one who never fails, who can be bought with nothing coined by the mint,— it is time for him to be afraid. Already the Union-Labor District Attorney was a disappointment to Ruef. Mr. Langdon believed he was elected to his office to serve the people; the boss believed Mr. Langdon was elected to serve him.
One day, when Fremont Older called on the District Attorney to ask what he would do toward punishing the municipal grafters if they were discovered, Mr. Langdon held up a volume of the Penal Code.
“This book,” said the District Attorney, “contains laws which I didn’t make, but they’re there; I’m going to enforce them. I shall punish crime wherever I find it.”
There were many nightly conferences of which Ruef was aware; an army of detectives dogged the steps of the investigators. The boss knew the worst when District Attorney Langdon appointed Francis J. Heney his assistant, when Rudolph Spreckels publicly announced that he guaranteed a fund of one hundred thousand dollars for the uncovering of grafters. These statements gave surprise; Ruef’s counter-charge produced amazement.
On the evening before Francis J. Heney was to appear in Judge Graham’s court for the drawing of the new Grand Jury, Fremont Older, who was living in the suburb San Rafael, was called to the telephone by Rudolph Spreckels. When Mr. Older returned to the group with whom he had been sitting, he announced:
“The Mayor has removed Langdon and appointed Ruef District Attorney.”
Our faces were as blank as his. No one spoke. We could easily imagine the sensations of people in medieval times when a bloodstained usurper seized the throne. Finally one
man said quietly, “That means the rope tomorrow.” There was no need of another word.
I went to town with Mr. Older the next day. It was a pleasure to see strangers in the train and on the boat as indignant as we were. White-haired old vigilantes shook their heads, their fists, and recalled the days of Fort Gunny-bags and ’56. They’d see that scoundrel hanged, they declared, before he should defeat an investigation. Langdon should be returned to office. For the first time, San Francisco was thoroughly aroused to the fact that there was something to investigate. The city was in fine fighting trim.
V
We felt that we were living once more in a law-abiding community when we read that during the night Judge Seawell had issued a writ prohibiting Ruef from taking possession of the office of District Attorney. Now it was for Judge Graham to determine whether Ruef or Langdon should be recognized at the jury drawing. But Judge Graham, after all, did not decide it. Mr. Older hurried to his office. From there he issued twenty-five thousand papers which were distributed free in the streets, on the ferry-boats, wherever men were assembled. For the first time in San Francisco, a daily paper was given away.
There was nothing startling on the first page; only, in type of medium size, the request that all good citizens assemble in front of Judge Graham’s court to see that District Attorney Langdon be not deposed from office. Many of the police and all of the deputy sheriffs in the city were at the synagogue where Judge Graham was holding court; they were needed to keep in order five thousand of the most prominent men in San Francisco who responded to the call. Armed, ropes in pockets, the citizens glared at Judge Graham when he entered his court-room. They peered at him through the windows. They decided it. It was Ruef’s first Black Friday.
When the police shunted Rudolph Spreckels out of the crowded entrance to the synagogue, and he squared his shoulders, thrust out his elbows, looked at the officers, I have never seen any one so white with fury as he was, except, perhaps, the excited boy of about eighteen who rushed_up to the capitalist and said, “Mr. Spreckels, you’ve only to give the word. I’ll go anywhere you lead, do anything you say.”
Mr. Spreckels’ lips were trembling with anger, but he answered, “Keep calm.”
By a curiously dramatic fate, Ruef appeared in the house of worship of his fathers to be judged. I was crowded out of the crushing,
[pgbrk] MRS. FREMONT OLDER
283
stifling mob in the synagogue.
Standing on the seat of an automobile, 1 watched the throng.
Here I had an excellent view of the resolute faces of the silent men among whom the police rode back and forth.
Finally it was announced that the judge had recognized Langon; the Mayor was powerless to remove a county officer. There' was a big cheer of triumph.
When District Attorney Langdon emerged from the building, when Francis J. Heney appeared in the doorway, when Rudolph Spreckels, when William J. Burns, when Fremont Older came, it was like an introduction of the Graft Prosecution to the men of San Francisco. Ruef, guarded by the police, showed himself last.
A physician struck at the boss — a young man who afterward was to remain day and night with Francis J. Heney when he was thought to be dying. The blow of the zealot acted as a suggestion. The throng surged forward like a wave. There was the voice one reads of, but rarely hears; when you have heard it you try to forget it: the voice of human beings so filled with hatred that they growl for blood.
“They’ve killed Ruef,’’ said the chauffeur standing near me.
We ran onward with the others, but I turned back, sick at the thought of the boss mangled
by a mob. After all, what was he but a mean little man?
Ruef was saved by the police. His troubles were not ended; they were only begun.
At this stage of the investigation the laboring men were disgruntled; they believed that the Graft Prosecution was organized for the purpose of convicting Union-Fabor officials. It was useless for Francis J. Heney to say that no one, rich or poor, was to be spared.
The workmen had been deceived too often; they doubted every one. The wealthy believed with the poor that the Graft Prosecution was to rid
the city of some undesirable Union-Labor su-
pervisors and stop there. All clamored for the investigation to proceed. Some millionaires contributed handsomely to the fund; they afterward closed their purses and opened their mouths. The newspapers were of one voice in favor of the prosecution. The only blemish on the inquiry, in the minds of the editors, was the report that it had been instigated by Fremont Older, although he himself had claimed no credit for it in the Bulletin. Many journalists did not like to think of themselves as carrying another man’s grist to the mill.
The evidence in the French restaurant extortion case which Mr. Older had begun to gather two years before was turned over to Mr. Burns. The Secret Service man pieced it together and verified the statements. Mr.
FREMONT OLDER MANAGING EDITOR OF THE SAN FRANCISCO ‘'BULLETIN”
[pgbrk] 284
THE STORY OF A REFORMER’S WIFE
FELIX PAODEAUVERIS
THE GREEK WHO PAID THE CLAUDIANOS BROTHERS TO DYNAMITE THE HOUSE OF JAMES GALLAGHER
Heney declared he had a perfect case. He took it before the Grand Jury and obtained indictments against Ruef and Schmitz. William J. Burns’ son, who trailed Mayor Schmitz in
Europe,— in fact, sailed with him on the steamer when he left New York,— tells how Schmitz looked in the London hotel when, gray and shaking, he opened the telegram giving information of his indictment for extortion. On the other hand, Abraham Ruef, whose life had for many years been made up of deceptions, surprises, and effronteries, went whistling through the town. His admirers said, “That Ruef is too smart; they’ll never catch him.”
He said it, too; but always there was a buzzing in the head from which he could not escape. Eighteen supervisors — he was in their hands; eighteen greedy, blind little pigs who would feed at any trough. He was at their mercy. He felt Burns reaching out for them. In the darkness a soundless battle was going on for them; they were the strategic point. Every Sunday evening Ruef was their pastor. He preached to them to avoid the devil, Burns; to take money from none but their savior, Ruef. It was the only way to escape prison. The supervisors followed the word of their leader; vainly the prosecution laid traps for the eighteen wary little pigs.
Finally Fremont Older persuaded G. M. Roy, who had been associated with Schmitz and by him ungratefully treated, in secret to join forces with the prosecution. Mr. Roy knew all the supervisors; they had confidence in him. He pretended that he wanted a skating-rink ordinance killed; in return he offered to pay them for their votes. It was arranged that the
TWO OF THE THREATENING LETTERS RECEIVED BY FREMONT OLDER AFTER THE “ BULLETIN" OFFERED A $1,000 REWARD FOR INFORMATION ABOUT THE GALLAGHER DYNAMITING
[pgbrk] SIDE VIEW OF THE GALLAGHER HOUSE, IN OAKLAND, AFTER THE DYNAMITING
FRONT VIEW OF THE GALLAGHER HOUSE, SHOWING WRECK CAUSED BY DYNAMITE
285
supervisors should receive their bribes in Mr. Roy’s own rink.
William J. Burns was the stage director, and G. M. Roy proved to be a great actor. After
Mr. Older witnessed the first repetition of the performance which has since been so often recounted in the public prints, he said, “It will never happen, Roy. Nothing like that ever
[pgbrk] 286
THE STORY OF A REFORMER’S WIFE
came off outside the melodrama.” Nevertheless the rehearsals for the play went on while Ruef was on trial in Judge Dunne’s court.
Suddenly the boss went into hiding. After three days Mr. Burns found him at a roadhouse near the city. Ruef had forfeited his bail; he came back one night a prisoner.
Just as the Burns automobile appeared before the little red “Prosecution House” in Franklin Street, by accident Mr. Older’s motorcar drove up. The machines stood eyes to eyes. Ruef, sitting on the front seat, recognized Older over the chauffeur’s head.
“My God!” he said to Mr.
Burns, as if he had encountered an ill omen,
“there’s Older; that’s the last straw.” It was.
Ruef was no longer able to preach to the supervisors.
Stage director Burns and actor Roy went on with their drama; all depended on it. One misstep would so alarm the supervisors that they could never again be tempted by the Burns trough.
I was made aware that all had gone well, that the first and only performance had met with success, when one day I was summoned to town from San Rafael, where we lived after the fire. Mr. Older met me at the ferry. I was with a party of friends. Before greeting me he said under his breath, “Lornegan.” Then he went on talking with the others. However, the whisper told me that Lornegan, the supervisor, was caught; that the first pillar of the big graft structure had fallen; that it would pile upon its builders like a tomb. During the following three days all the supervisors confessed, and the whole flimsy structure of municipal graft toppled over.
At this time the Graft Prosecution knew its
greatest local favor. One thousand banqueting merchants stood on their chairs as they cheered Francis J. Heney, William J. Burns, and Rudolph Spreckels. Mr. Spreckels was a hero worthy of a monument. People forgot that Mr. Older for years had bored them with his talk of corruption. Now he was a farsighted journalist. Mere acquaintances called to congratulate him. Every one connected with the Graft Prosecution was endowed with all the godlike attributes of the successful.
V I
Mr. Burns continued his work. Ruef confessed before the Grand Jury. Indictment followed indictment; millionaires, social leaders bearing great names, were arrested for giving bribes; the fame of house after house was besmirched. Patrick Calhoun, descendant of John C. Calhoun and Patrick Henry, was weighed on the same scales with Lor-
negan, the baker.
It was a new justice in San Francisco: a justice that punished the tempter as well as the tempted. Applause ceased. Now Francis J.
Heney had a different look. Men no longer
crossed the street to shake Rudolph Spreckels’ hand; he was a suspicious character on trial. Fre-montOlder’s popularity faded. It required more moral courage than the average person possessed to walk in public with any member of the Graft Prosecution. To ask whether one believed in looting the city became a delicate personal question.
Members of the prosecution were not bidden to entertainments where people of fashion gathered; old friends fell away. Men in the clubs and judges of the higher courts fraternized with the corruptors of the city’s government; women reserved their sweetest smiles for the candidates for State’s prison.
R. A. CROTHERS, THE FEARLESS OWNER OF THE “BULLETIN"
[pgbrk] FRANCIS J. HENEY, MRS. HENEY, AND MR. AND MRS. FREMONT OLDER, IN MR. OLDER’S AUTOMOBILE ; MR. OLDER AT THE WHEEL
THE SNAP-SHOT WAS TAKEN ON MR. HENEY'S FIRST OUTING AFTER THE SHOOTING. THE SAME AUTOMOBILE BROUGHT MRS. HENEY TO THE BEDSIDE OF HER HUSBAND WHEN HE WAS THOUGHT TO BE DYING, AND TOOK HIM FROM THE HOSPITAL WHEN HE WAS CONVALESCING
Even some of the courageous ministers suffered. The pastor of a wealthy congregation, on daring to urge men to dare to do right, was deserted by a third of his parishioners. One multi-millionairess found herself without a church where she could worship. In town her clergyman actually thought the rich could commit crimes; in the country her rector was equally benighted. If men of the cloth thus interpreted the Word of God she could see no salvation for her soul save in remaining at home.
A grocer who voted to convict a bribe-giver lost fifteen hundred dollars a month as a result of his act. Mr. Oliver, the foreman of the Grand Jury which indicted the millionaires, one morning woke without a real estate business; he had been boycotted by the “higher-ups.” Unshaken by the great pressure brought to bear upon him during the deliberation of the inquisitorial body, he told Mr. Older that when he listened to the recountal of what men would do for gain he became ashamed of money-making. Not long ago Mr. Oliver was
asked by the editor concerning his business property. “I have no business,” he answered. "I’m straightening up my affairs to leave town. Perhaps my partner can do better with me away; he has nothing to live down.”
The moral health of a community is dependent in a great measure upon the honesty of its newspapers. Unfortunately, many California publications are openly venal; others salve their consciences with the advertising contracts of the big corporations. Three quarters of the press come under one head or another; such papers quickly found their place. No money was to be had from the Graft Prosecution; the reformers were fighting six hundred millions: The great body of publications began poisoning the public mind for the "higher-ups.”
As the trials of the bribe-givers progressed, every possible means was employed by the indicted men to prove that the law cannot worst money. Rudolph Spreckels was erecting buildings; they were avoided by tenants as though plague-infested. Rich people withdrew their accounts from his bank. The Bulletin, as the
287
[pgbrk] 288 THE STORY OF A REFORMER’S WIFE
most aggressive newspaper in California, the journalistic backbone of the prosecution, was boycotted by advertisers. Patrick Calhoun himself solicited merchants to withdraw their patronage from the paper. Bankers, holding embarrassed business men in their power, warned debtors against giving support to the Bulletin. One by one, advertisers dropped off, but the paper lived. Then a new journal, one backed by the indicted and blasted, was thrown into the field. The Bulletin was obliged to spend seven thousand dollars a month to hold its subscribers together. Affairs would have looked black to ordinary men. Rudolph Spreckels and Fremont Older met one day to talk the situation over.
“ I won’t back down, if it takes every dollar I have,” said Mr. Spreckels.
“And the Bulletin will not change its policy, if it means that we print a nine by nine paper, and I have to live in a car on the Ocean Boulevard and spend fifty dollars a month. We are fighting the battle of the
people; they’ve got to come to us.”
The men shook hands on their promise. Mr. Crothers, the proprietor, undaunted, smiled acquiescence in the compact.
One day a washerwoman sent to the Bulletin a dollar for the Graft Prosecution fund. She had a boy, she said, and she knew the prosecutors were trying to better conditions for him. The washerwoman forced the contrast between herself and the millionairess who took her sons from church because the man of God would not proclaim one commandment for the poor and another for the rich. This and other incidents brought to the reformers the knowledge that they must rely for their support on the toilers.
SNAP-SHOT OF WILLIAM H. LANGDON AND RUDOLPH SPRECKELS
SNAP-SHOT OF WILLIAM J. BURNS AND J. J. DWYER
[pgbrk] MRS. FREMONT OLDER
289
VII
Tirey L. Ford, an attorney for the United Railways, was on trial for complicity in the trolley franchise bribery. While leaving the courtroom one day, Earl Rogers, who was Ford’s counsel, was overheard by a Burns detective to
say, “I’ll get that---------------Older in a few
days.” The editor’s life had frequently been threatened in the fight for good government, but he made no change in his habit of going about unarmed and unaccompanied.
One evening we had invited some friends to dine in a restaurant opened by G. M. Roy. Because of Mr. Roy’s services in entrapping the supervisors, sympathizers with the prosecution planned to give dinners at his cafe. As Mr. Older did not return in time,
I, believing that he had been detained and would appear later, went to keep the appointment with our guests.
Mr. and Mrs. Meney had a table next to ours. When Mr.
Heney informed me that my husband had gone to see a friend, his manner lacked its usual frankness; but still I believed that Mr. Older was taking part in a political conference. My guests, having sharp ears, made out from the conversation between Mr. Heney and ex-Mayor James D. Phelan, who sat at the next table, that Mr. Older had disappeared and could not be found. 1 scarcely heard what was being said by my friends; my thought was of the remark of Calhoun’s attorney, and I sat with my eyes fixed on the entrance to the restaurant.
About midnight, after my guests accompanied me home, 1 was told over the telephone by the editorial writer of the Bulletin that Mr.
Older was with him and some others, engaged in an important secret discussion, but that he would soon return. At four in the morning, when I was awakened by my telephone bell, the editorial writer expressed a desire to have a talk with me. Then I knew it was not an ordinary political conference at which Mr. Older had assisted; on the contrary, it was most
extraordinary. My visitor permitted me to read the proofs of what the Call already had on the press; these told me that Mr. Older had been kidnapped by Calhoun’s ruffians and attorneys.
At half after five on the preceding day, while the editor was in Mr. Heney’s office, some one called him to the telephone. The stranger, introducing himself as Mr. Stapleton, said he desired to see Mr. Older on a matter of business important to the Bulletin. He wished to meet him at the Hotel Savoy. Information often comes in strange ways to newspapers; so Mr. Older started for the hotel designated, hoping that the result of the interview would be of some service to the cause. However, in leaving, he said to Mr. Cobb, the partner of Mr. Fleney, “This may be a trap. If I'm not back in fifteen minutes you’ll know it is.”
In Van Ness Avenue the editor observed an automobile filled with evil-looking men. The motor-car drew up to him; one of its occupants stepped out. The stranger said he had a warrant for Mr. Older’s arrest on the charge of criminal libel in Los Angeles. Calhoun’s attorney had trumped up a charge; an obliging judge issued the warrant in secret.
"I demand bail,” said Mr. Older.
“All right,” replied the stranger; “I’ll take you to Judge Cook.”
FRANCIS J. HENRY
FROM A SNAP-SHOT TAKEN IN FRONT OF THE COURT-HOUSE ON THE FIRST DAY OF HIS REAPPEARANCE AFTER BEING SHOT THE DAY OF RUEF’s CONVICTION
[pgbrk] 290
THE STORY OF A REFORMER’S WIFE
Before he entered the automobile the editor was searched for concealed weapons by a Calhoun gun-fighter. Soon the machine started rapidly down Van Ness Avenue. Already Mr. Older was suspicious.
“Judge Cook’s court isn’t in this direction. Where are you going? ”
“We’ll take you to the Judge’s house,” was the assurance.
Mr. Older was seated between two men, one of whom held a pistol against his side. When Mr. Older realized that the machine was approaching the park, he knew he was not going to the Judge’s residence; he was being carried away by force in defiance of the law. The automobile was going at the rate of forty miles an hour when he started to rise.
"If you make any effort to escape I’ll have to shoot you,” the man with the pistol warned.
When the editor heard these words, and felt the mouth of the weapon against his side, he knew he had been brought away by his captors in the hope that he would make an outcry. Mr. Older could obtain no information as to his destination. The motor-car followed round-about roads unfamiliar to the editor, who sat for sixty minutes, with the pistol thrust against his ribs, and smoked.
At Redwood City, where the machine finally drew up to await the Los Angeles train, he discovered that two of Calhoun’s attorneys had followed the automobile in another car. Then the remark of Earl Rogers came back to him: “
that -------
Older in a few days.”
The editor was placed in a stateroom, under guard. He wrote telegraph messages to Rudolph Spreckels and me. Although he paid for these, they were never sent. Mr. Burns afterward discovered that
one of the attorneys took them from the guard.
' Calhoun’s agents overdined, and boasted of having Mr. Older as prisoner in the state-room. A stranger to my husband, on overhearing the comments of the captors, feared that Mr. Older might become a victim of foul play. The passenger left the train at Salinas and spent an hour telephoning the morning Call the whereabouts of the missing man. The editor of that newspaper very kindly communicated with Mr. Spreckels. The news arrived at midnight; at that very minute one of the Burns detectives entered the “Prosecution House” with corroborating information; this he had obtained from employees of the United Railways. Immediately Mr. Burns and Mr. Spreckels called long-distance telephones into service. At two in the morning a judge in Santa Barbara held court and issued a writ of habeas corpus to be served when the train should arrive there.
Mr. Older the while was in ignorance of what had happened. On looking out of the window of his state-room, he did not realize that the big crowd of people had assembled to see him released from the Calhoun hirelings. The kidnappers were afterward indicted for their act. Still San Francisco did not awake to a realization of the crimes which were being committed to bury crimes. The sympathizers with the bribegivers would have told you that Mr. Older abducted himself.
VIII
The pivotal witness against Ruef, Schmitz, Calhoun, and the “higher-ups” was James Gallagher, ex-supervisor, and the boss’ former paymaster. Without his testimony no one could be convicted. Mr. Older had long been warned that a Mexican sharpshooter was
MRS. FREMONT OLDER
[pgbrk] MRS. FREMONT OLDER
291
to put him and Gallagher out of the way. So many were the alarms, however, that they ceased to alarm. Gallagher showed great courage; nevertheless, in the interest of his own safety, he decided until the trials were finished to live in Oakland. When, one evening, our telephone bell sounded and the District Attorney’s office told us that the Gallagher home in Oakland, with its eight occupants, had been dynamited, one knew to the full what it meant to fight six hundred millions. Miraculously, none of the family was killed. Although the following month some of Gallagher’s houses were destroyed by dynamite, the ex-supervisor did not waver in his testimony.
Perhaps you think San Francisco was indignant at this crime. A small percentage of its people were; others laughed at caricatures of the dynamiting published by the subsidized papers; still others doubted that the “higher-ups” were accomplices in the act. They thought, in all probability, that Gallagher at heart was an iconoclastic but practical socialist who didn’t believe in property.
Mr. Older induced the Bulletin to offer a reward of a thousand dollars for information concerning the dynamiters. Even the editor was surprised at the results. We have a collection of letters, some of them written in red ink, threatening to blow up the Bulletin building, to kill Mr. Older, to murder his family, to assassinate each member of the prosecution and those dear to them, if the offer of a reward was not withdrawn within twenty-four hours. As a result, all the residences of those endangered were guarded by the police to such an extent that one felt as if one were living in Russia or Turkey.
The offer of reward remained in the Bulletin day after day. It bore fruit. Two young Greek bravos, the Claudianos brothers, crawled up out of the gutter to confess that for hire they had dynamited Gallagher’s house. One of them is now in jail; the other, who did the deed, is in State’s prison for life. The jury decided his fate in a few minutes.
But where are those who instigated the crime? The poor, ignorant wretches said they had been paid by a very intelligent Greek, Paodeauveris. This man, who was immediately identified as an old henchman of Ruef, fled the city the day the confession of Claudianos was made public. In his haste, however, Paodeauveris left behind him in his room a significant photograph — a picture of himself in the uniform of a conductor of the United Railways, standing on the platform of a car. Among the man’s papers William J. Burns
found reports which showed that Paodeauveris was a secret agent of the United Railways.
One midnight Mr. Older returned from the conference with William J. Burns and District Attorney Langdon at which young Claudianos told his story. It was not a narrative to conduce sleep. Gallagher’s house was but the first step in the program, the Greek said. Mr. Heney they plotted to put out of the way by slung-shot. One plan of the assassins was to gain entrance to the Spreckels residence by making the acquaintance of the gardener; the house was to have been blown up while the occupants slept.
Toward our destruction the Greeks had made more definite progress. We have a shack on the Ocean Boulevard where Mr. Older likes to dine. The bravos admitted — William J. Burns afterward verified every statement — that Paodeauveris and they for months had been our near neighbors. Already the murderers had purchased and hidden dynamite in the cottage near ours rented by them. They had entered our place, as was shown, to find the lay of the rooms. For thirty days they had lain in wait for us. At that time, fortunately, Mr. Older had been enigmatically warned by one for whom he had done a favor.
“ I won’t say a thing, except don’t dine at the beach; don’t dine at the beach. I can’t tell you what I know, but keep away from there.”
This man who gave the saving word knew well the underground life of the city, and he spoke with authority.
“Tell those people you know that I shall dine at the beach as usual,” was the editor’s answer.
We did; but Mr. Older profited sufficiently by the warning to take with us an officer of the law. While we ate, the policeman in the automobile kept watch. His presence alone prevented the Greeks from dynamiting our dining-room.
These incredible happenings at times gave us the sense of not being real people living in a real world; one seemed to be passing through an impossible melodrama. Yet San Francisco slept on through such startling events. The minds of the well-to-do and wealthy seemed narcotized by the statement, “The Graft Prosecution hurts business.” One millionaire recently voiced the opinions of the so-called upper classes: “If the prosecution had stopped after punishing Ruef and Schmitz, it would have been the greatest investigation ever conducted in America; but when they went after the bribe-givers it became persecution.” It was, indeed, persecution of noble, high-minded, well-dressed gentlemen who made anarchy of laws in their inspired vocation of money-grubbing.
[pgbrk] 292 THE STORY OF A REFORMER’S WIFE
Caricatures of the leaders of the prosecution — men who were working day and night for the city, living ten years in one in their struggle to see if equality before the law were only a dream of those who wrote the Constitution — these caricatures were the delight of thousands of men and women.
“Don’t talk to me about the prosecution; it bores me; it is dead,” said an eminent educator. “Mr. Herrin is a gentleman.”
Mr. Heney had given the money he might have earned, his fame, his great vitality, the best years of his life, to the work. Mr. Spreckels had contributed his splendid purpose, two hundred thousand dollars directly, and much more indirectly. Mr. Burns, to be sure, was paid for his services; but one can’t remunerate integrity, genius, and the heart and soul of men. The Bulletin is the only large paper in San Francisco not owned by a man who has millions aside from his journal. R. A. Crothers, its proprietor, had sustained a loss of a quarter of a million dollars in the battle for good government. Fremont Older had contributed his inspiring enthusiasm, his marvelous energy, his money, and six years to the cause. These men and a dozen more, in addition to their substance, had bestowed a devotion and a zeal never equaled except by others engaged in working for mankind. Yet the prosecution was dead, was the public verdict. Mr. Older wondered if the people really did want good government. When friends, society, newspapers, courts fell away, the dearer grew the struggle to those who had given themselves to it.
Then came a bullet. Mr. Older was in Mr. Heney’s office when the telephone girl rushed in with a message:
“Mr. Heney has been shot; he is dying in the court-room.”
That, again, was what it was to fight six hundred millions. When the editor hastened to his motor-car, drove it through the crowded streets to the side of his friend, he recalled the day in Washington when they met; he himself seemed to have been an agent bringing Mr. Heney to this end. His recollection also was of one night when the prosecutor’s voice rang out in a speech:
“I’ll send all these indicted men to jail, if I have to pay for it with my life.”
He was paying. Mr. Older realized it when he fetched the grief-burdened wife to her husband; when he saw the big, vital, fighting man carried to the ambulance; when the afflicted, white-faced throng followed the conveyance; when, in order that the sufferer might not be distressed by the jolting of the vehicle, men
unhitched the horses and drew the ambulance up the hill to the hospital.
But at last all the good in San Francisco was awake. It called out in loud tones its penitence for indifference to the men who had walked on dynamite, who had offered themselves as targets for assassins of body and reputation, that the city might have a decent government. Trimming, misguided, cowardly, well-meaning men and women came into the open with expressions of remorse for their conduct. One hundred thousand of them overran halls, blackened squares where speeches were made — speeches in which the hearers loudly concurred. The listeners promised in the future to give their support to the Graft Prosecution.
I X
Fashionable San Francisco alone set its face against ashes of regret. Its countenance hardened in anger. From this class there was no word of sympathy for Francis J. Heney. They were even more bitter than usual; public opinion had altered in an hour. “It’s a pity the bullet didn’t do better work,” was whispered in the clubs.
A student of sociology will wonder whether San Francisco is to a greater degree lacking in moral sense than other cities of the Union. This will be for later investigations to determine. Governor Folk once told me that while he was performing his great service for St. Louis he was an unpopular man in his city. Mr. Heney and Mr. Burns relate that when they were working in Portland, by a large section of the community the prosecutors, rather than the land thieves, were placed on trial.
Perhaps the hostility among San Franciscans to impartial enforcement of the laws arises from its large foreign population, amazed Eastern people have often remarked. We Americans like to blame foreigners for our crimes. While San Francisco has an unusually high percentage of residents whose parents were born in Europe, sympathizers with good government have reason to be grateful for them. Those who in this crisis did the best work for the city were the Irish- and German-Americans. Among a dozen leading spirits of the Graft Prosecution, Charles Cobb, law partner of Mr. Heney, Hiram Johnson, who after the prosecutor was shot made the great speech in the Ruef case, and Fremont Older alone have centuries of American ancestors behind them. On the other hand, the mental accomplices of the bribe-givers, those who have cast the weight of their unanimity, their fortunes, toward the escape of the ich criminals, are of
[pgbrk] MRS. FREMONT OLDER
293
New England or Southern ancestry. The members of the Supreme Court which released Schmitz and Ruef, the judges of the Appellate Court who so uniquely decided that extortion was not a crime, are for the most part Americans.
Undoubtedly, to a certain extent, the immoral public opinion in San Francisco lies in the origin of the city. San Francisco has neither religious nor wholesome village traditions. Little more than half a century ago it was a great, sprawling, uneducated mining town. Like all mining camps, it looked lightly on the Ten Commandments; what did anything matter so long as one had struck it rich? Men did not discriminate in their friendships; did not ask what or who their associates were. The one touchstone to acceptability was, "How much has he?” The history of many of the great fortunes in the State is the history of crime.
Unfortunately, vicious qualities of nature persist, are transmitted, while virtues are effaced. The sons of rugged, if unscrupulous, sires took on the qualities of the world’s idle. It is not strange that many wealthy San Franciscans should have been directly or indirectly connected with bribery; pirates don’t beget Emersons. Parasites on society, like parasites on animals, weaken first in the brain centers. Their wills, their morals go. Dollars become their art, their literature, their character.
The capitalist class in San Francisco, as elsewhere, being barren of ideas, has a fine disdain for every form of knowledge except the multiplication-table. Persons accustomed to using their minds find themselves cudgeling their brains for conversation; one encounters similar difficulty in a nursery. If one of these men heard Pym or Hampden mentioned, he would think you were talking of a racing-horse or a cocktail. Early Bright’s disease or apoplexy seems to be nature’s normal corrective for this class of idlers. Meanwhile it is they who think for San Francisco, just as they think for every community where the cash-register is the god.
Indiscriminate admiration for the rich, Herbert Spencer says, renders true reform impossible. An inordinate degree of this has been the hindrance to reform in San Francisco. Six hundred millions send out waves of thought that sweep away individual entities. One with a million may produce a ripple, but only ten or fifteen millions can really ruffle the surface of the meditations of society. Men in the immediately lower and dependent tiers no more venture on independent opinions than a pack-mule overleaps a precipice; their sole intellectual endeavor is to think like an illiterate multi-millionaire.
It would not be worth one’s while to write concerning a small number of frivolous, selfish, ignorant men and women, but for their far-reaching influence. Our encouraging realization is that below them are the great masses whose point of view has not been vitiated by idleness and opulence; they still believe in dull old goodness. In the finality of things they will become masters. Even if the courts refuse to send to prison any but the poor, the people of California have been sent to school by the Graft Prosecution. They have been given a glimpse of a political operating-table; they have seen their courts responding to corporation buttons. Now they know that their State officials are the Southern Pacific Railway. Already the people’s representatives show fear of the voters; even a “machine” Legislature passed an anti-race-track and a direct primary bill during its last session.
One may well wonder why, in the face of so many despairs and so few hopes, the men of the Graft Prosecution continue the struggle; why Francis J. Heney, impoverished, scarred, deaf, went back to the court-room where he was shot down. I can best illustrate by recounting a story of Mr. Heney.
A month after his narrow escape from death, one day he was walking with Mr. Burns and Mr. Older about William Kent’s place at Kent-field. They met a bull in an open field. Mr. Heney at the time was so weak that he could scarcely stand; and yet the old spirit of contest rose in him. Leaping forward to the bull, he began taunting him.
“Don’t do that,” remonstrated Mr. Older; “he’ll gore you.”
“ I can drop him at three feet,” drawled Mr. Heney.
This is how he feels toward the six hundred millions he is fighting.
Rudolph Spreckels used to say: “Of course, people misunderstand me. I am willing to wait ten years for them to know that my only motive is to do something for California, to make of her what she should be.” Not long since, stretched on a sick-bed, in speaking of the vilification received by him, he said to Mr. Older, “It doesn’t matter if they never understand.”
The battle started by Fremont Older has given San Francisco an excellent city government, but his local reward for seven years of effort is to find himself the most hated editor in California. Still, this does not deter him; he has gone beyond that. He says the work does him good; it is excellent moral calisthenics. He began fighting alone. If his associates dropped by his side he would go on calling out, “Stop thief!” until even the deaf should hear.
[pgbrk] THE LITTLE HARMONIZER OF HIS THREEFOLD NATURE
B Y
MARION HAMILTON CARTER
ILLUSTRATIONS BY ROLLIN KIRBY
MISS BESSIE was down on her knees, helping the babies to get last year’s rubbers on this year’s shoes, buttoning little coats whose buttons occurred at the rate of one button to two and a half holes, and receiving in return a number of sloppy and many sweetened kisses, whose saccharinity she surreptitiously removed with her handkerchief, for it was very real. So also were the kisses, and so were the thirty little kindergarten children to whom she was daily ministering with the dangerous enthusiasm of a neophyte. For Miss Bessie was a recently graduated member of the Cult of the Good, the True, and the Beautiful, plus the Threefold Nature of the Child — body, mind, and spirit—as according to the High Priest of the Cult, Frobel; and she was guided by Ideals in her life work.
As the last baby’s kiss was deposited on her cheek, Miss Bessie got up from the floor to find herself under the steady, contemptuous eye of Master Aloysius Mulligan,— familiarly known to the neighborhood as “Pugsy Muggins,”— who fixed her with the words, “Whadda youse le’ them kids slobber yez fer?”
“ Because I love them,” she answered, in her turn fixing the young Aloysius with a kindergarten-manual smile.
‘‘Aw, g’wan! Whatcher givin’ us?”
“Why, Aloysius!” She said it with surprise and a hurt, sad look. “Why, A-/oy-sius!” “Me name’s Pugsy,” he announced with a grin. “An’ youse love dese kids? Hully gee! I wunner whatcher made uv.”
Pugsy’s manners and language were not ornamental, for Pugsy had dealt exclusively with the plain, cold facts of life for six summers, to say nothing of winters, which, owing to the rigors of the climate and a wardrobe consisting of three semi-diaphanous garments and a pair of cast-off ladies’ shoes, were passed mostly in the unholy privacy of dens to whose atmosphere
and contents the gutter might be compared as clean.
Miss Bessie stood looking at him. Here was her first great problem: she had not “reached” Aloysius; Aloysius had not visibly yielded to the harmonizing influences of the kindergarten. After four blessed weeks of songs and games and love and joy, not to mention sewing cards and clay birds’ eggs, Aloysius was still conspicuously out of Harmony. Only that morning had he batted Rafael Piccudella on the head and almost gouged an eye from the classic countenance of Mario Colluci under pretense of showing “how the farmer reaps his barley and rye.” Yesterday, while playing scissors-grinder, he had seized one of Amelia Collins’ cherished pigtails and snipped it between his fingers, with so vivid an effect that that young lady had existed for hours afterward in the firm and tragic belief that she was parted forever from that beloved possession.
The day before, when they had played “ birdies in a nest,” he, pleading to be mother-birdie and feed the babies, had introduced between the unsuspecting lips of Yetta Waskowitz a large bolus of leaves, hastily culled in mother-bird flight past the window-box. And last week — But this tale would become a volume if I attempted to relate the escapades of our young Aloysius during that one month.
“Youse love dem kids — love dem?” mused Aloysius. “An’ youse ain’t de foist I seen, neider.”
“Stay a little while, dear,” invited Miss Bessie, with a swift inspiration. “I want to ask you something.”
He seated himself on one of the kindergarten tables, and Miss Bessie took a little chair. As she considered how she would “reach Aloysius,” Aloysius whistled, delivering indis-criminating kicks with his ladies’ shoes the while, most of which her knees intercepted. Let her bear it — it would show him that she
294
[pgbrk] ‘‘‘an’ youse love dese kids?’”
loved him. Love was the Key to the Universe. His very assumption of scorn — it was assumption, of course,— showed his yearning to love and to be loved.
“Dear child, don’t you love something?” began Miss Bessie, smiling and trying to take his hand, which he prevented by jamming it deep into his pocket. “ Haven’t you anything —• any little pet — even a flower?” And she pictured herself presenting to him a neat potted geranium, with a big red blossom on top of a long stem (the sort teachers always give to little boys), and confiding to him that it was for his very ownest own, to care for and watch and love. "Not even a flower?”
“A flower! Aw, g’wan! Wot youse t’ink a boy wants wit’ a flower?”
“But haven’t you anything? A doggy? a kitty? — a dear little kitty that you watch and care for and love?”
Pugsy considered this for some time, as though trying to determine which of his possessions filled the requirements, and, evidently satisfied, communicated, “Gotta mouse.”
“A mouse! A real live little mouse — that you feed and love. Oh, Aloysius, how sweet!” “Do youse love mice, too?”
“Y-yes, Aloysius, I love them too,” Miss Bessie lied boldly. At the same time she shuddered; though it wasn’t as much a lie as it seems, for kindergartners can always love Mouse
in the abstract. With Mouse in the abstract held cleverly before her mind’s eye, Miss Bessie rattled on, “Mice are dear little things. And you love yours and take such good care of it? Oh, Aloysius, won’t you bring it to-morrow, so we can have our morning talk on mice, and all
the children can have ”
“Dey cant have my mouse!”
“No, dear, it’s yours. But you’ll let them see it in its little cage —• you keep it in a cage?” The shivers ran down her spine even when he assured her, “Betcher life I do! If I bring ’er you’ll give ’er back? Honest? Cross yer heart ? ”
“ Y es, yes, indeed! Cross my heart — there! — I’ll give it back.” (Wouldn’t she, though!)
For a moment Pugsy looked unconvinced, and Miss Bessie beamed; his suspicion of her only measured his love for his little pet. Then, slipping down from his perch and looking her square in the eyes, he said, “I guess youse is honest. But I wouldn’t take sixteen dollars in me inside pocket for that mouse. Nit!” and he dashed into the hall with a whoop.
“Dear child!” said Miss Bessie at his cap, as it went bobbing past the window, “ I knew there was something.” She jabbed hat-pins into her pompadour meditatively. “The very darkest heart has one illumined corner whence comes Harmony to the whole nature.” And with the joy of one who saves souls for a living,
295
[pgbrk] 296 THE LITTLE HARMONIZER OL HIS THREEEOLD NATURE
she departed for lunch, and Mouse (in the abstract) became glorified as a means of redemption: the Harmonizer of a Threefold Nature.
The first person to meet her on the steps next morning was Pugsy. In his hand was a “catch-’em-alive” mouse-trap, and upon his freckled young face sat a smile so enchanting that Miss Bessie could not refrain from kissing him. Harmony had come — she felt it to the core of her kindergarten heart.
Pugsy, with his trap,— which he had buttoned inside his jacket,— was installed upon her right, and the morning ring was formed. Miss Bessie began the exercises with her usual “Good morning, little children,” and as they replied, "Good morning, Miss Bessie,” she was conscious of a poised flutter of expectation. She was glad. She would make this.a wonderful day of joy for little Aloysius. They would sing only their morning hymn, and then, with a few well-chosen remarks, she would “get ready the apperceiving matrix” and “draw out” her lesson on love and, incidentally, Mouse.
As soon as the little voices chopped out the words:
“ In all we do, in work or play,
Make us more loving day by day,”
she unbuttoned Pugsy’s jacket, motioning him to place the trap on his knees.
“Children,”—silence fell with a gasp,— “children, we have a little friend with us today.” (This by way of preparing the “apperceiving matrix.”)
“Now, look-a-here, you kids,” shouted Pugsy, “this here’s my mouse, an’ if one uv youse
touches it, I’ll tear his ”
“Ssh! A-Zoy-sius!” reproved Miss Bessie, but gently, and with a detaining hand on his arm. “They wouldn’t hurt your dear little mouse for worlds. . . . Children, the little
friend who has come to see us to-day is Mr. Mouse.”
“Hernameain’t'Mr. Mouse.’ It’s Everliner.” “I didn’t know he had a name,” smiled Miss Bessie. “Children, we must all love Evelina very much because he is ”
"He’s a she!”
“ — Because she’s one of God’s creatures,” finished Miss Bessie.
“Now, look-a-here!” cried Pugsy indignantly, “you shan’t tell that on ’er — she ain’t no screecher — she ain’t let out one squeak since I got ’er.”
“God’s — creature, dear, not ‘screecher,’” corrected Miss Bessie.
“‘DO YOUSE LOVE MICE, TOO?’"
[pgbrk] “ 'HER NAME ain't “MR. MOUSE.” IT'S EVERLINER’ ”
“You shan’t call ’er names — nit, an’ youse can take it from me.”
“Of course not — you didn’t understand, dear. God’s — crea-ture —— ”
“Now, look-a-here — you better take that
back —- or I’ll ”
“Yes, yes, dear,” soothed Miss Bessie. The “apperceiving matrix” was evidently prepared — even overprepared. Without waiting an instant Miss Bessie plunged for her lesson with “Children,”—a dazzling smile to all,—“ I wonder who can tell me what the little mouse lik'es best —- to eat!” She sprung the last words with a suggestive glitter of teeth.
“Toes!” pealed Sadie Wishnowetsky, and shuddered under her beruffied white apron.
“Toes,” seconded the infant Amelia Collins,— she of the cherished pigtails,— who sat next to Sadie; and, rolling her eyes, she shuddered under her little apron.
“Toes!” echoed around the morning ring, and each little apron performed a close imitation of Sadie’s.
“Children! Sadie! Amelia! What are you thinking of?” cried Miss Bessie. “You must listen, and you must think before you speak.
. . . I asked you what the little mouse
eats,”— she said this with exquisite enunciation,— “what —- she —- eats. . . . Now,
Sadie.”
“Toes,” repeated Sadie confidently. "Teacher, you ast how it iss, und I tell you mice they eats toes.”
“They eats toes,” whispered Amelia.
“Yes, Teacher, Miss Bessie,” continued Sadie, acknowledging Amelia’s support with a nod, “mice they eats toes, und 1 tells you how you ast, but you can to ast off anybody. Lena Polly-watsky, ain’t it how mice eats toes? Stella Bamberger, ain’t it how mice eats toes? Mattie Levy, ain’t it? Ain’t it, Sonia Solovovo?” Each child gave frantic assent, Lena crying out, “She tells you right how it iss,” and Sadie, pointing her finger at Lena, wound up, “See? There, Teacher! I tells you how you ast how it iss, und Lena, she knows. But sooner you don’t believe me und Lena, you ast off my mama und Lena’s mama; she lives by my house, und she tells you.”
Sadie, having fired her battery in support of natural science, sat back triumphantly, but before the smoke had cleared, her pal, Lena, leaped to the breach, discharging her own.
“Yess, Teacher,” she cried, “Sadie, she lives by my house, und she tells you how mice iss. Mice, they is-by your house, und night comes, und they creeps out — squiggles und squiggles und comes by your bett1—■ squiggles und squiggles und comes into your bett! Squiggles und squiggles und comes by your toes!” (Shudders) “Und sooner they finds your toes, they eats ’em, so you don’t got any toes when you wakes up no more. Yess, ’tis so.”
Chorus of girls’ voices: “’Tis so! ’Tis so! Teacher, Sadie she tells you — Lena she tells you — me mommy she tells you — me pop
297
[pgbrk] 298 THE LITTLE HARMONIZER OF HIS THREEFOLD NATURE
says so — my granny, she ought to know, she tells me — Maggie Moran, by my house, tells me.” Babel of voices all at once—“Eva, Effie, Nora, Sally, Jennie, me mommy, me pop tells me — tells you — you ast, Teacher, you ast my big sister,” etc., etc., etc., “how it iss.”
And into this fusillade Miss Bessie could only shoot the word, "Children!”
In the second’s lull that followed, Rachel Cohen’s voice rose shrilly: “I want I should keep my toes, und I don’t want 1 should no mice have, do you, Ameliar? You want you should keep your toes how dey wass on you a’ready?”
Amelia’s eyes were as big as saucers.' She shook her little cherished pigtails with such violence that they stood out straight from her head. “I — w-a-a-nt — my t-o-o-es!”" she wailed, as though that portion of her anatomy had abruptly disappeared.
“You should to keep your toes how they wass on you, Ameliar,” Sadie reassured, “und no mice get ’em. Mice, they ain’t fer you, und they ain’t fer me, no.”
“ They ain’t fer me — ner me — ner me,” went pealing round the ring.
“Children!”
“Teacher, yess,” cried Yetta Waskowitz, seizing her chance for exposition. “Mice makes it how I should to wear mine shoes by mine bett.
I say on mine big sister, ‘Shoes they ain’t so awful comf’able in bett — it ain’t stylish.’ Sooner I wear ’em, und my brother I key wear ’em, und Solomon wear ’em, und Leah und Eva wear ’em, sooner I gets kicked, for I key he say how I kick him first mit mine shoes, und he lies — I don’t kick him. Und I say on my sister, 'Clo’es they iss stylish in bett, but not aprons und shoes; I should to take off mine shoes same as I take off mine apron.’ Und my big sister she says back on me, sooner I don’t keep mine shoes, sooner comes mice, und sooner they eats mine toes, 1 goes by the kindergarten school no more.”
This last direful suggestion, delivered in Yetta’s most lugubrious voice, brought confirmation in a prolonged groan of “Ohs,” “ Yesses,” and nods; and Sadie, who had meanwhile loaded up for a fresh volley in defense of the cause, burst out, “Teacher, Miss, Yetta Waskowitz she tells you how it iss by my house — I must to wear mine shoes in mine bett. Mice comes by your house — so” (little fingers crept under her apron), “squiggles und squiggles, so — comes by your bett — squiggles — und squig-gles . . . und squiggles
. . . und sq- ”
“ I don’t want I should to be squiggled mit no mice!” shrieked Eva Katz, her eyes popping
out of her head as she watched Sadie’s squiggles creeping nearer and nearer her own little apron. And Amelia wailed her a close second, “I— w-a-a-nt — my — t-o-o-es!” followed by the entire feminine contingent according to their several needs and necessities of expression.
Now, this elucidation of the dietary of mice had gone thus far unchecked only partly because of its “vital interest.” Miss Bessie taught by what she believed was the Socratic method of question and answer, which, being interpreted according to the scriptures of her Trainer, meant that she should by questions draw out what was already in the children s minds. And the less there conceivably was of plain, cold fact, the harder she habitually “drew.” Her ideal of a lesson was to get it all — drag it piecemeal from the drear, blank depths of ignorance in those infant minds. For she had been taught that it was a sacred duty to allow the children to empty their mental pockets of every sort of junk and refuse they contained. Let the children talk; let them tell everything they knew of mice or men, and everything they didn’t know; this last was also important, for then one might combat the False with the True until Truth alone remained.
In the midst of the uproar my young friend Pugsy, laying his hand in Miss Bessie’s and turning up a ravishing smile, remarked, “Hully gee! Dent kid goils is erfraid er my mouse, ain’t dey, Teacher? — an I ain’t.”
It was his first childish confidence, and such moments are precious and not to be lightly passed over by those who watch the awakening of gutter-bred souls. Miss Bessie paused long enough for a responsive squeeze of the little hand in hers, and whispered back, “ You aren’t afraid, dear, because you love Evelina. ‘Perfect love casteth out fear’ — how true!” and she sighed.
“I — w-a-a-nt — my — t-o-o-es!” wailed Amelia.
There was no time for texts, or awakening souls.
"Children!”
“ I — w-a-a-nt — my — t-o-o-es!”
“I don’t leave no mice git onter you, Ameliar,” Sadie encouraged, with a friendly pat.
“ I — w-a-a-nt ”
“Children! Children! Listen! Let us ”
“ I ain’t got a use fer no mice!” shouted Tony Castelanato, rolling a pair of lustrous orbs and appealing to the masculine contingent, hitherto in the background. “ Have you, Isadore Levy?”
“Mice!” shouted Isadore in return. “What good does they make by houses? None — on’y so cats eat ’em.”
My cat she don’t eat ’em,” loftily sneered
[pgbrk] “ ‘MICE, THEY ain’t FER YOU, UND THEY AIN’T FER ME, NO ’ ”
Rafael Piccudella. "No, my cat is above such.”
“They is fer ash-cans only,” declared Otto Schenck.
“Und gutters, Otto,” added Moses Cohen.
“ Because dey is wermints,” explained Michael Casey at the top of his voice. “ I say it — dey is wermints.”
Chorus: “’Tis so, Mickey, ’tis so!”
The “God’s creature” idea had run off the track and was plowing along on the ties. Before Miss Bessie could rescue it, I key Goldenstein, starting from his chair, cried, “Sooner mice comes by my house, 1 kill ’em — yes!”
“My pap 'e keel ’em so,” and Mario Colluci, making a dramatic gesture as of one holding a writhing mouse by the tail, dropped the invisible “wermint” under his foot. “Scrunchy— unch — so — ah! ”
The little girls shuddered; some of them screamed; they saw that mouse, caught in the very “squiggle,” and crushed underfoot beneath their very eyes.
“Children! Mario! Ikey!” Miss Bessie’s voice was drowned in Solomon Oppenheimer’s taunting shout, “Look here! Sooner one gets on me—I kill him so!” and he illustrated as per Mario Colluci.
“Und sooner,” Eva Langenbahn burst forth,
before Solomon’s demonstration of prowess was finished, “one gets on me, 1 yoost screech und
I screech — und — I — screech ”
“/ screech till 1 kills my own sellup!” interjected Sadie with immense relish.
“I tells you,” pealed Yetta Waskowitz, “I tells you — sooner even I sees one, I screech und t’row fits.”
At that instant Pugsy raised the cage and shook it. Yetta saw the mouse whirling about inside, and she promptly illustrated her text: she screeched and threw fits then and there! “Children!”
Miss Bessie sprang from her chair. Yetta lay on the floor writhing and kicking. The Misses Wishnowetsky and Pollywatsky were preparing to follow her example with the utmost possible despatch. Little Amelia sat rocking and moaning, “ I —w-a-a-nt — my— t-o-o-es!” The elder children clattered a babel of words: “You don’t put ’em on me!” “No mice fer me!” “I keel ’em!” “You put one on me, I kill you!” “I tells my mommy!” “Call de cop — de cop — de cop!” The younger children were whimpering and shuddering.
Poor Miss Bessie, dominated in the treble of her own private consciousness with a shrill “What shall I do? What shall I do?” and in a deep, deep bass with—-“Suppose the principal
299
[pgbrk] 300 THE LITTLE HARMONIZER OF HIS THREEFOLD NATURE
should come in, or the district supervisor!”
— dragged Yetta from the floor, and, holding her in an iron grip with one hand, with the other pushed Sadie and Lena into their chairs in a manner not prescribed by any known kindergarten manual. At the same time she shouted, “Children! Children! Be quiet instantly — do you hear me? Instantly! Every mouth shut — shut! Hands folded! Not a word
— not a sound! Instantly, I say!” in tones such as no kindergartner, seeking to bring Harmony into Threefold Natures by means of the Good, the True, and the Beautiful, has ever used toward any child.
But it had its effect. There followed a lull. Miss Bessie made use of it to carry Yetta across the morning ring, and whisper to Pugsy, "Aloysius, darling, quick, take the mouse to the dressing-room," giving him a look to which he instantly responded. Then, depositing Yetta with a shake and a thump in her own chair, she told that young lady, “You sit there, now, and don’t you dare to make a sound! If you do, I’ll punish you! Do you hear me?” and before she had received the gasping “Y-yep,” she had rushed to the piano and struck a chord. “Form in line! Mark time, mark!—For-ward, march!’’ And the day was saved. To the strains of “Yankee Doodle” seventeen nationalities who voted straight ticket on Mouse fell into line, thence into order.
There remained only Amelia still mourning
lost toes as Miss Bessie played the children to their seats at the long tables. She doled out sewing cards, and presently had all the little fingers sewing and all the little voices chirping:
“Oh, we’re all sewing, sew-sew-sewing,
Oh, we’re all sewing, so happy and so gay.”
This accomplished, she turned her attention to mothering her dear little Amelia, and to soothing the feelings of her dear little Aloysius.
At the end of an hour, the “day” was worrying along at about its usual rate; but not until Evelina had departed never more to return would Miss Bessie dare to breathe freely.
Never more to return! How could she break it to that poor little child? — tell him that his one loved object, which he had so confidingly brought, must be banished from the sacred precinct where Love reigned — banished through no fault of his or hers? How could she explain it and not prove herself the veriest hypocrite? Other children brought kittens and puppies and canary-birds; a frog and a turtle lived in the room: Evelina was banished. Oh, if she had only been a geranium; or a sickly bean vine in an old tin can, how easy to lead little Aloysius to “turn to the light like a plant to the sun”! But Evelina was a mouse that ate toes for a living; Evelina must go.
With these sad thoughts, Miss Bessie prepared to send Evelina home early “for safety.” She
IN THE CENTER OF A GROUP OF HER CHILDREN STOOD PUGSY AND LITTLE AMELIA”
[pgbrk] “ ‘STEP ALONG, ME SON'"
put it to Pugsy, “Evelina might be frightened by the noise of dismissal and made sick — she was so very, very little,” was Evelina. And Pugsy showed an appreciative smile, remarking only, “Dem goils is erfraid,” and quietly departed.
The gong over the kindergarten door volleyed its nerve-racking ear cannonade, and the children formed in line and passed out. The upper grades, dismissed five minutes later, had not yet begun to pour down their hordes. Silence reigned. Miss Bessie took a deep breath, gave it out in one long “ah” — the morning was over.
At that moment the quiet was ripped asunder with a shriek like that of a lost soul. Miss Bessie rushed to the corridor. In the center of a group of her children stood Pugsy and little Amelia — Amelia, with toes inturned, arms outstretched, every finger spread, livid with horror: she had given her screech, and died to the world in that attitude.
“What is it?” gasped Miss Bessie, Amelia's horror reflected in her own face.
With a shriek Pugsy’s answer burst out: “Oh, Teacher! Miss Teacher! She’s got ’er, an’ she
won’t give’er back! She’s got Everliner up her sleeve, an’ she’ll carry ’er home! Teacher, youse git ’er fer me — remember how youse talk about doin’ t’ings fer boys wot y’ love — youse do it fer me — youse git Everliner out er Ameliar’s sleeve. Teacher, Miss, git ’er — git ’er.”
As Miss Bessie took in the meaning of this frantic appeal, her heart stopped, her spine turned to an icicle. Twenty rigid, breathless little forms awaited her action in fascinated silence.
“El-how did it h-happen, Al-al-loysius?” was all she could stammer out.
“She took ’er!”
“O-o-o-h, Pugsy!” rang from the circle. Animation returned.
“Teacher, I tells you,” cried Sadie Wish-nowetsky, coming to life. “It ain’t how it iss. No; Pugsy was puttin’ his mouse onter Ameliar so’s we could see her t’row a fit, und it runned up her sleeve, und she don’t know where it iss no more. Und Pugsy he says on her if she don’t hand it right back, he’ll hat out her brains with the trap.”
“Pugsy!”
Amelia awoke to the world. The choice of
301
[pgbrk] 302 EDITH WYATT
seeing her brains strewing the corridor or of rendering up the mouse from her sleeve brought her out of her trance long enough for her to emit bloodcurdling screech number two, with addenda of wails. She had her reward. The bulky form of the school policeman loomed in the door, and was greeted with cheers and a yell, “ De cop!"
“What’s all the racket?”
Twenty accusing fingers pointed; twenty shrill voices whooped, ‘ Pugsy!’’
“Pugsy! Why, if it ain’t me old friend Pugsy Muggins. So ye’re at it again? Pugsy, me boy, I b’lieve ye’re caught dis time wit’ the goods on ye. I’ll see ye home first — then I’m thinkin’ I’ll see ye somewhere else later.”
A look passed between the Awakening Soul and the officer—a look that told volumes of previous acquaintance, and all sorts of awakening. A blue-sleeved arm shot out, and Pugsy prepared to depart plus one white-gloved hand on his collar and minus the Harmonizer of his Threefold Nature. He made a frantic effort in the direction of the Harmonizer, and was
jerked back with “Step along, me son. If it s monkey ye’re givin’ me, I’ll be tempted to play papa till I’ve settled me own little account wit’ ye on the place where it b’longs. See?”
Pugsy cast agonized looks at Miss Bessie and moaned, “Teacher — Miss — Everliner— I want ’er! Oh, Teacher!”
The officer paused to glance inquiry at Miss Bessie. Miss Bessie was dumb.
“Miss Teacher!” Two little hands, one with an empty mouse-trap, were stretched out in piteous appeal. ‘‘Tell de cop — git him ter wait! Oh, Teacher, don’t leave him take me wit’out Everliner!”
Miss Bessie was motionless.
At that instant one of God’s creatures dropped at Amelia’s feet, skittered over the floor, and hid in a crate of supplies. Pugsy wrenched himself loose, leaped the distance to Miss Bessie, and shaking the trap in her face cried, “Sheenie! You Sheenie! I see inter youse now! Youse wanted dat mouse fer yer own self, an it wu{ de one I wu{ savin to put up de cop’s pant-leg when he walks on our cellar gratin
A MIDLAND TWILIGHT
B Y
EDITH WYATT
THE cloud-plumed afternoon has flown along the household street. Leaf-shadows flicker. Freshly strown, the sprays whir. Far and fleet, Hushed, furtive footsteps dodge and creep, and hunting voices call,
“I spy,” and “One, two, three for you,” around the street’s still hall.
The little winds of twilight blow. Upon the hop-scotch chalk,
Home-turning footsteps come and go along the dappled walk.
The little winds of twilight blow closed flower and full-stirred tree;
And far and near a singing voice cries, “All sorts out in free!”
The cloud-plumed afternoon has flown, slow-winging, green and bright;
And all the dreams her hours have known turn with her toward the night — The spacious night, that quivers far in silver keeps and gray,
Beyond that first cool snowdrop star above the roof-rimmed way.
Home and the night — profound for me, and happy their wide grace
Thrills through the wind, the full-stirred tree, fleet game and white-starred space.
Deep by their ways may my soul live, as by her halidome,
Through all her cloud-plumed day-time hours: and when to my great home, Home and the night, at last I come, so may it be for me:
Peace; in my heart, a fresh voice singing, “All sorts out in free.”
[pgbrk] BRUTALITY
BY
LINCOLN COLCORD
ILLUSTRATIONS BY ARTHUR S. COVEY
IF the men ashore could only take a trip or two and learn the facts,” said Nichols, “there wouldn’t be such a howl about brutality on shipboard.”
I had started the discussion. Up the coast of China, awhile before, my crew had given me some trouble; and the miserable effigy of an official who encumbered the position of consul in that port had completely exonerated the sailors and given me a lecture on the universal brotherhood of man. It made me hot under the collar to talk about it; and the crowd on the Omega’s quarter-deck— captains of home ships, a few Englishmen, and the masters of several coastwise steamers — listened with sympathetic ears. I always felt relieved to have Nichols around; you could be sure of two things with him — he’d thoroughly understand you, and he’d do all the talking. We reached for cigars when he spoke, and lighted them at leisure.
“Let ’em come out and give it a try themselves, and see how they would like it,” he went on, waving his hands about to drive away mosquitos. " Let ’em learn that sailors before the mast are the scum of the earth, the outcasts of society; criminals, a lot of ’em, and every mother’s son of ’em without reason, or pride, or sense of duty, or any part of a man. Let ’em take a ship to sea, and suddenly realize, as the land sinks out of sight astern and the arm of the law loses its grip, that four of them have got to buck up against forty scoundrels forward, and that every duty to God and man requires them to bring the ship safely to port again. What would they do, 1 wonder? If they were men, they’d do as we’ve done — sailors belong to a class that won’t be moved by anything but fear. If they were less than men, they’d probably be killed before the passage was over, and the ship and the crew and the whole confounded business would go flying to hell. The best way may be hard — life’s a cruel thing for the under dog. But they don’t need to be under dogs;
they choose to be — which justifies my point, if it doesn’t prove it.
“You’ll not find the hue and cry about brutality at sea confined to the high places,” Nichols continued. “ It’s everywhere — a popular conviction. People like to believe that officers are savages; it makes the profession more romantic. A man’ll take a yachting trip on the Great Lakes, immediately become enamoured of the sea, and dash off a story about deep-water brutality; and an honest landlubber, who couldn’t put an eye-splice in his own clothes-line, will sit down and devour it with feelings of relief and security. So the notion’s got abroad, and established itself. Bucko mates, ferocious captains, blood for breakfast every morning—that’s how they picture life aboard a ship.
“Of course, I’m not saying that there hasn’t been a lot of needless brutality at sea. None of us would claim that, I’m sure. It couldn’t very well be otherwise. Hard times make hard men; but they don’t necessarily make bad hearts. And it’s difficult to stop subjugating; great men have found that out too late — kings, commanders, discoverers. The spirit of power is never satisfied. We call it human nature, a very primitive quality — very god-like, too. Democracy among men is a fallacy, a dream of the millennium; the great are bound to rise, and the small are bound to herd and follow, till the end of time.
“Looking at it broadly, I don’t believe the sea’s a whole lot different from the land. Evil things will happen anywhere — and even in extreme cases, it isn’t safe to place the blame. A man may grow bitter, he may lose his soul; you don’t know what he has to contend with. The war of worlds and centuries goes on in every heart; and until you have heard the whole story, it’s not for you to say that this is right and that is wrong. I learned my lesson a long while ago, the time I went with Forrest Thorndike. I’ll never judge the heart of a man again.”
3°3
[pgbrk] 304
BRUTALITY
Nichols broke off a moment, and we settled ourselves for one of his illuminating yarns.
“You’ve probably heard of Forrest Thorndike, ” he began. “ During the last years of his life he caused so much comment that the echo of it’s in the air yet, whenever a few old-timers get together. The shipping world was startled, too, at the way he finally went out. I happen to know all about him; and if you ever hear a man malign his memory, recollect what I’m going to tell you. After all, he’s gone now; and the life he fought his way through, like a man battling single-handed against hosts, is gone as well. Our race is growing more civilized, and it’s no longer necessary to stand in the open and take what comes. Men are learning to shy at life; men have discovered that it’s possible to circumvent duty, and laugh in the face of destiny. But he was a man brought up to different things, and so embraced the struggle without a question, and held his position with a sort of desperate courage to the bitter end. But the world never knew, and he was soon forgotten, or only remembered when men were speaking of wild doings on the sea.
"Forrest Thorndike was called the most brutal captain of his generation. When I was a youngster starting out, he was just laying the foundation of his reputation; and after I’d been on the sea a few years, I’d heard him mentioned all over the world as a hard and cruel man to sail with. Reputable mates actually complained that he ill-treated crews. That means a good deal, coming from the after end of the ship. I never happened to be in port with him until that time in Hong-Kong; but you know how a man who does things, good, bad, or indifferent, gets chewed over among the initiated. He was reported to have done some pretty tough jobs — shot a man or two; pitched a man overboard in a fit of anger, and, as luck would have it, a shark came along and snapped him up before they could save him. Things like that don’t sound well — regrettable incidents, they might be called. Little I thought that I’d soon go to sea with the man.
“ I was mate of the Forest Belle when she was lost in the Bashee Channel — you remember. They named the rock that she hit on for the vessel, Forest Belle Rock, just south of Botel Tabago. A terrible experience; we were half dead when we reached Hong-Kong. I lay around there awhile, and during my stay ashore Forrest Thorndike arrived in the ship named for his wife, the Alice Thorndike. He had a holy crawl aboard the first day in port, and all his officers left with the crew. I talked with the mate of her when he came ashore; the captain seemed to have staggered him. He was mentally
breathless, and wouldn’t say much; now and then he’d break out with some wild yarn, and on the whole I didn’t take stock in half he said. Then one day I ran into Captain Thorndike, and had a look at the man himself.
“ It was down in Reeve’s store that I met him. He was an immense man, and in the dusk of the store he loomed up like a mountain. I dodged, figuratively speaking,—- expected him to bellow like a bull and run at me, I guess. • But nothing startling occurred. He turned out to be one of the mildest men I ever talked with; a gentleman, to all appearances, with something very whole-hearted and sincere in his manner. I was astonished. We held a long conversation — talked over ships and men we knew; and all the time I sat with him, his horns didn’t once show. I liked him from the first; and, sailor fashion, I threw everything to the wind and made my decision on the spot. It wasn’t curiosity that prompted me to go with him, but the charm of the man himself — really. A man once in a great while impresses us that way, you know,— as if he’d got a closed book locked up in his heart; a man of tremendous presence, drawing people to him by the subtle hint of his own unexpressed individuality. He was like that — born to rule. Born to suffer, too, but I hadn’t fathomed his possibilities then.
“.On the homeward passage, I didn’t think of much else but the man in the after cabin. The reports of him were not exaggerated. A devil seemed to possess him the moment he stepped over a vessel’s rail. But, for all he did, I couldn’t make him out as black as he was painted. I wasn’t satisfied to condemn him;
I wanted to get behind the veil and discover his motive. The genuine brute is a man without a saving grace—-an animal. Captain Thorndike was a long way from that; in fact, this attitude of his toward the sailors was his only disagreeable feature. To me he was everything that a captain should be — pleasant, dignified, really irreproachable. Beyond this, he was the finest seaman that I ever sailed with.
I saw so many things to like in him, that I was more and more puzzled at each outbreak of his.
“Little mistakes would set him off; he would attack a sailoron the slightest provocation. We had a miserable crew, picked up along the beach in Hong-Kong; but they were mostly men without force or decision, and would have given us no serious trouble. He treated them as if they were a gang of mutineers. The discipline on the Alice Thorndike was tyrannical; and, I must confess, I had some difficulty in living up to it myself. When the Captain had trouble with a man, he seemed to lose his senses in a sort of blind rage, as if he had a personal and
[pgbrk] LINCOLN COLCORD
305
deep-seated grudge against that particular sailor. He never realized his own strength, either. His manner of fighting was sanguinary, and, with his tremendous muscular power, he always went farther than he knew. You must remember that he stood some six feet four, and weighed two hundred and fifty pounds
— a figure of a man that you don’t see more than once in a lifetime.
“ I recollect one instance of that passage that’ll show you what I mean. One noon he came on deck and found the vessel half a point off her course. Without a word, he hauled off and hit the man at the wheel behind the ear. The minute his fist touched flesh, he seemed to go wild — like those stories you read about captive tigers tasting blood. The man went down, of course, and the Captain kicked him
— kicked him forward through the alleyway, and off on to the main-deck. After that he walked the poop all day, exactly like a caged animal, thinking to himself. Later we found that the man had half a dozen ribs broken.
“Watching him like this from day to day, I began to feel that Captain Thorndike had something heavy on his mind — something that, from his own private and inconceivable point of view, led him to act as he did. I’ve always been foolishly alive to impressions of this sort. Commonplace men don’t interest me at all; but give me a man of mystery, eyes that conceal, a voice that whispers undercurrents, and I’ll hatch up some theory to explain him by. I became convinced that Captain Thorndike detested sailors. His voice was full of it when he spoke to them; they were his slaves. To tell the truth, no slaves ever lived in greater fear of their master. When occasion demanded it, he hounded them around like a drove of cattle. And yet—I can’t explain, but, in spite of everything, I felt in my heart that he wasn’t a brutal man.
“We reached New York that trip without any fatal row, and the crew were glad enough to get ashore alive. They made no complaint when they were paid off, or, if they did, it wasn’t investigated; you can see how long ago this was. I stayed by the ship, and saw little of the Captain till after we were docked and discharging. Then, one evening, the old call of the city got into my blood, and 1 wanted to go ashore. We’ve all felt it, lying along South Street and listening to the sounds of millions. New York! How much we sailors think of that old town! You may meet anybody there — you rather expect some surprise when you go ashore; and you’d be sure to meet everybody if you waited long enough, for they all come back some day. There’s adventure lying in wait
on every corner—startling opportunities, new friends that promise yet another lesson of the heart. I wouldn’t be astonished to find myself headed that way again before I die; though it’s a long run from Singapore to Fourteenth Street.
“When I tapped on the cabin door that evening, the Captain told me to come in. He was sitting in a big chair facing the door, and had evidently been reading. I was struck at once by the lonesomeness of the cabin. A little room that seems bright enough to a man in mid-ocean loses all its attraction when the ship is in. In fact, I believe that the time when a vessel’s the saddest, and when seafaring seems barest and most unsatisfactory, is while she’s at the dock, before she’s started out at all.
‘“Will you be aboard all the evening, sir?’ I asked.
“ ‘ Yes, ’ he said. ‘ I never go ashore in port. ’ Then, as if it seemed to explain something, ‘My wife is dead,’ he told me.
“'I was thinking of going uptown, then,’ I said.
“‘Go ahead,’ he answered. ‘There’s no reason why you shouldn’t.’
“1 turned to go, and had reached the door, when it came into my head to do a funny thing. I was so light-hearted myself; and though he was an absolutely unapproachable man, I suddenly thought that he might really be unhappy, and perhaps thinking too much. These moments come to us — when we could save the world. I stopped and turned back.
“‘I’m going to a show,’ I said. 'Would it be any use to you to go with me?’
“ He considered a moment, and then got up. ‘I’d like to,’ he said. ‘Sing out when you’re ready.’ Without being eager, or even smiling, he conveyed an impression of pleasure — a sort of relief, as if one more evening was accounted for.
“That was a strange evening for me. The play we went to was one of those emotional things — I forget who was acting; the kind city folks see so often that they seldom get the thrills, but which appeals to us lonely and unsophisticated men, who catch such fragmentary glimpses of the heart of life, with all the glamour of the play-house and all the meaning that the actors try so hard to show. I saw Forrest Thorndike crying— a big, stern man, the brute of the seas. He didn’t try to conceal his sympathy; wept, made choking noises, wiped his eyes — was such a baby that people all around us were laughing. There’s a picture for you — these city people, who, no doubt, sat at home in their quiet libraries and harrowed their souls with stories of brutality on the high seas, laughing at Forrest Thorndike while he cried. The irony of the situation tickled me. He
[pgbrk] 306
BRUTALITY
leaned over toward me once and said, ‘I know I’m making a fool of myself, but I can’t help it.’ After a while he said in my ear, ‘It hits me hard.’ Something in those words of his, more than any of the anguish on the stage, touched my own emotion and brought the tears to my eyes. I suddenly realized that the man’s heart must be suffering.
“After the show, we went down to the Old Homestead, and sat there talking for a long time. I recollect a lot of our conversation, but the end of it was dramatic in the extreme. The play must have moved him deeply, or he never would have said so much; he must have taken a liking to me, too. But it’s always impossible to account for the effect of an emotional influence upon a man like him, who’s got more than his share of sentiment and memory.
“He was communicative and reticent by turns; moody, and evidently harassed by some thought that was gnawing at the vitals of his consciousness. ‘What’s the use?’ he said suddenly. ‘What’s the use — what’s coming of it all?’ We had been talking about the seafaring life. ' I can’t see the outcome. Voyage after voyage, port after port — to what end, I’d like to know? What’s life for, if it isn’t for friendship and regard? Some one to care, some one to go to, some one to suffer with. . . . We aren’t making passages for the sake of making other passages. We’re making them for the sake of gaining happiness, ultimately. Isn’t it so? For the sake of the heart; and, if that’s denied, then on account of duty, and faith, and principle. God knows, we get little enough of what’s coming to us, on the sea. What do you think about it?’
“ I hesitated to say what came into my head. To be honest, I felt that it might be impertinent. But the moment was propitious; he was sitting opposite, plunged in a sort of fierce and disquieting repentance—-and I’d always itched to probe his wound.
“‘Do you really believe that?’ I asked. ‘You must see that it isn’t what you practise.’
“ He leaned across the table, and I noticed that one of his hands, lying on the cloth, suddenly clenched tightly. ‘What do you think of me?’ he asked in a repressed voice. ‘No — I won’t ask that. What do you hear of me?’
“‘I’d rather tell you what I think of you than what I hear of you,’ I answered. ‘You’ve got a reputation on the sea ’
“He sank back in his chair. 'I know,’ he
said. ‘ Do you think I’m not aware ?’ His
face flushed very red, as it did in moments of anger. ‘It’s one of the hardest things I have to bear,’ he continued. ‘You don’t understand; nobody understands. They call me
hard.’ He looked at me closely, with a baffled meaning in his eyes. ‘ Have you found me hard?’ he demanded.
“ I was up a stump. I felt something coming, and didn’t want to turn it away. And yet he made me angry, because I remembered how little he’d tried to change his reputation — how deserved it was, in fact. I never could stand being imposed upon.
“'If you don’t like what men say of you,’ I asked, ‘what makes you treat a crew the way you do? You and I’ve had no difficulty, but I make it my business to get along with hard men. With a crew of men, Captain Thorndike, you’re more than hard — you’re brutal.’
“ I thought he was going to leap from his chair. 'I hate ’em!’ he shouted. A few people turned and looked at us. Lowering his voice, he went on, with his teeth set. ‘They don’t deserve any consideration — sympathy!’ he shot out. ‘ I hate every bone in their miserable bodies! 11 makes me sick to hear a single word out o’ their filthy mouths! Low-down, good-for-nothing swine!’ He choked, and swore vehemently.
“‘Why?’ I asked. ‘ I’m not a lover of sailors, but I can’t be as hard on them as you are. What’s your reason?’
“ He looked at me again. ‘ I wonder if you’d see,’ he said, speaking to himself as if he knew a profound secret that no one would be likely to believe. ‘ I’ve often wondered if men would concede anything — make allowances. I never asked for sympathy from God or man,— justice, even,— but it’s hurt to see them look at me in horror. I’m sensitive; perhaps this thing has cut my nerves adrift.’ He sat for some time thinking, and I watched him. He certainly didn’t look like a brutal man. I was ready to believe anything of him but that. In my heart I had felt all the evening the proximity of pain —- the consciousness of one of those devastating battles which go on between a man’s passions and his disposition. I got it from his voice, from his manner, from what he left unexpressed. While I was thinking, he started in, so low that I could barely hear.
“‘I had a boy once,’ he said. He stopped there, as if a memory had suddenly struck him dumb. After a while he added to his statement. ‘ I had a boy that didn’t turn out very well.’ Sitting up straight to his full height, he began to speak rapidly. ‘ It may have been my fault; it’s impossible to say. All I know is that I tried, according to my lights — I tried. He went to sea with me, and so I suppose I had a hand in his undoing. It wasn’t because I was hard, though; I wasn’t a very hard man then. The devil was in him — couldn’t be knocked
[pgbrk] LINCOLN COLCORD
307
out! His mother died soon after he took to the sea, and that was a blow to both of us. It might have been different.’ Captain Thorndike paused, and his eyes, fixed on the white cloth, seemed contemplating a distant prospect. He started, as if he had seen too much. ' But the boy drifted away,’ he went on slowly. ‘That’s the story. Do you understand? ’ he cried at me.
“I didn’t answer; in fact, he hardly gave me time. ‘They got him!’ he said savagely. ‘They got him — the sailor crowd! He’s one of
them now — an old drunken, worthless sailor! Do you see? He didn’t have his fling and get over it. He fell — he never rose. 1 couldn’t get him back. God is my witness that I tried. Something interfered — and all that I could say didn’t accomplish anything. He’s gone. They got him — God damn their souls!’
“He stood up. Captain Thorndike wasn’t the kind to bury his face in his hands. He’d cry at a play, but not at anything that life dealt out to him. ‘Come,’ he said, ‘let’s go aboard.’ “We left the place without any more words, and didn’t speak all the way to the vessel. Going over the side, I asked him where the boy
was then. ‘ I don’t know,’ he snapped. ‘Never speak of it again.’ Just as he was turning to go aft, he wheeled on me. ‘He isn’t a boy any more,’ he said.
“Well, I’d heard of similar cases; the best men seem to have the worst sons. He’d asked me if I understood; and really, he couldn’t know how much of himself he’d explained. 1 wasn’t bothered any more with trying to reconcile the captain and the man. Blame him? I’m sure I don’t know. I’ve seen him do some hor-
ribly revolting things to sailors; I’ve turned away, sick at heart, more than once, with a man’s cries in my ears. But afterward, watching him pace the quarter-deck, I’ve excused a lot, because I knew how utterly bitter and lonely his heart was. Of course, he didn’t remedy anything; but shouldn’t we have taken much the same course? Think what he’d lost! His wife was dead, his boy was gone; nothing remained — and all the commanding structure that he’d reared and fashioned with the labor of dreams had fallen in ruins about his head. A weaker man would have given up the fight. But he didn’t — was building again, a poorer work this
"IT WAS DOWN IN reeve’s STORE THAT I MET HIM"
[pgbrk] 308
BRUTALITY
time, but Still, an effort. Wait—I’ve got more to tell.
“ I went with him another voyage, and finally we fetched up in Cardiff and loaded there for home. Cardiff was always the hanging-out place for the toughest gang of sailors in the world; and that time we managed to ship the worst crew, all told, that I ever saw put together. I found out later that it was cut and dried ashore; a crowd of them had patched it up to finish the Old Man, by hook or crook. This man Jim Rawlins— I picked him out the first day as the one we might expect the most trouble from — was the ringleader of the gang; he seemed to have a special grudge against Captain Thorndike. It seems that he was the one who had gone about among his friends and instigated the whole performance.
“So that was the situation when we sailed for New York—-a crew forward that had shipped with the express intention of doing up Forrest Thorndike, the brute of the seas. I felt, when I looked them over, that the concerted wickedness of their appearance was more than a coincidence. But this Jim Rawlins was the hardest-looking ticket of the lot. He had the regular old-sailor attitude — surly submission, nasty answers that cut the corners as close as he dared to shave 'em, assumed ignorance of his work — all the irritating things that a typical sailor can muster as an insult to authority. I mention him in particular, because I want you to keep him in mind.
“The second night out, I woke up suddenly in my watch below with a feeling that I’d heard something strange in my sleep. While I was gathering my wits, 1I actually caught the sound of a scuffle outside; and before I was fairly out of my bunk, a man stumbled in from the deck and fell against my door. I pulled it open, and he pitched in headlong, saying in a thick, gurgling voice, ‘I’ve been stabbed!’ I lit a match, and found it was the second mate.
“The next instant I had my gun out of the desk, and made for the deck. Of course, it was deserted. It wasn’t any use hunting for trouble just then, with a wounded man perhaps bleeding to death in my room; so I got the Captain up, and we carried the second mate into the after cabin. Captain Thorndike couldn’t get his bearings for a minute —- couldn’t believe it; but when he did realize what had happened, he was fairly insane. We soon discovered that the man was hurt more seriously than I’d supposed at first, and when we got him laid out on the cabin floor he was already unconscious.
“I’ll never forget that night. The Captain had a working knowledge of surgery, and used the few rough means at hand to stop the flow
of blood and close the wound. All the time he was working over the man, he swore a steady stream — cursed the crew horribly, and vowed he’d square the account and show them what it meant to mutiny. It was a lurid night — one little lamp, two of us bending over the body on the floor, and the crew in mutiny on deck. Once or twice I stepped to the forward door, but there weren’t any signs of trouble. Soon after dawn, the second mate died. We stood up and looked at each other, and the Captain’s jaws set with a crack like the cocking of a gun.
‘“Take the deck,' he said. ‘Call the men aft. I’ll talk to them.’
“I went up aft, and the man at the wheel looked at me narrowly, trying to see what was in the wind. I understood the whole thing now, and braced myself for a fight to the death. There were twenty-five of ’em forward, and the Captain, third mate, bo’s’n, and myself were the only officers left — four of us.
“A good many ideas went through my head as I walked along the alleyway; I realized, from long experience, the relative positions that we occupied. We may have seemed weak, judging by numbers; but murder has a strange effect on the murderers, and from a moral standpoint, as you might say, we were strong. It was an emergency that called for a decisive man. I didn’t fear anything on that score; Forrest Thorndike embraced emergencies like that. Raw power is a remarkable thing — better than ability, or courage, or foresight. I hadn’t a doubt, too, that the men were secretly trembling at what they’d done, regretting that they’d gone so far, and divided by the reaction of remorse. I was ready to fight, and fight hard; but, whatever came, the result was a foregone conclusion.
“‘All hands aft!’ I shouted. When they’d straggled along, and I’d counted noses,‘Line up there by the weather-rail,’ I ordered; ‘the Captain wants to speak to you.’ They obeyed without a word.
“ I held them there for at least five minutes, and no one stirred until Captain Thorndike appeared at the break of the poop, and came down beside me on the main-deck. At the sight of him, they seemed to sway and stiffen, and a low sound went up at the rear of the crowd. I felt my nerves tingle as I watched that striking picture — saw the men huddle together, and remarked the Captain as he stopped directly opposite and confronted them. How little any of us realized the true significance of the scene, the hidden forces of it! What we behold is indeed the least of life.
“Captain Thorndike didn’t waste any time.
[pgbrk] "HE FOUND THE VESSEL HALF A POINT OFF HER COURSE”
‘Who was the ringleader of this affair?’ he demanded.
‘‘They had probably foreseen that such a question would be asked, and decided among themselves to take advantage of the opening and test their strength at once. Knowing what I do, I can understand that the sailor who called himself Jim Rawlins would not have had the same apprehension for Captain Thorndike that the others held. 11 was one of those things that happen on the spur of the moment, anyway; the man felt the crowd behind him, and stepped forward boldly.
“‘I’m the ringleader,’ he said. ‘What are you going to do about it?’
"I suppose that was the first time that Captain Thorndike had noticed the man particularly; we’d only been out a couple of days, remember. He seemed to lock his joints with a great effort, and stood there immovable, looking at the man. His eyes were wide, devouring. All at once I realized that he was the prey of some deep emotion. In the half-light of dawn, his face was blanched and cold, like a face of stone. A horrible possibility came into my head, but the matter had passed out of any hands but his. Absolute silence fell on the deck, and we waited for the word.
“‘What’s your name?’ the Captain asked at last.
“The man laughed — a sound from hell. ‘Jim Rawlins,’ he answered, looking Captain Thorndike straight in the eye.
“They gazed at each other for another brief space, while God knows what passed in both
their hearts. Suddenly the Captain squared his shoulders, as if he had thrown off the weight of some obsession.
“‘That’s all I wanted to know,’ he said. Then he pulled out a revolver and shot the man through the body.
“At the sight of the gun, the crew fell away on either side and ran forward, dodging along the bulwarks. The man didn’t move after he fell. The Captain turned away without looking at him again.
“‘Attend to that,’ he said. ‘Clean up the deck. We won’t have any more trouble this trip.’ He walked aft, and the next minute disappeared through the cabin door.
“Left alone on the main-deck, everything turned black for a minute before my eyes. Somehow, it didn’t seem real; but when I’d got my grip again, there the man lay, dead. This insane idea that I’ve mentioned before came back to me with a rush; I wanted to find out if the man had given his right name. After the body was covered with a piece of canvas, I told the men to bring aft all of Jim Rawlins’ things to my room — his chest, clothes, bedding, everything that belonged to him. The Captain hadn’t shown up on deck then; I gave the watch to the third mate, and sneaked below to go through the dead man’s effects.
“When I went into my room, I fell over the chest that the men had tumbled on the floor, and sank down on it with my head in my hands. It may seem ridiculous to you, but I was scared. Events make themselves felt, in spite of eyes that warp and ears that lie; and in those
309
[pgbrk] 310
BRUTALITY
moments of silence I had been touched by the struggle of souls. I had no reason to suppose anything; but I hesitated about opening that chest-cover as if it concealed the most criminal of secrets. Why had the Captain looked at him? Had he imagined a resemblance — and suddenly discovered that the devil was trying to throw him from the course of duty? All at once the daring of the man, in challenging the Captain so recklessly, struck me with a new force. What did it mean? And to think that half an hour before the man himself had closed that chest, and sat on it, perhaps, plotting mutiny. 1 jumped up, for time was passing, and 1 didn’t want to be interrupted.
“The chest was locked, and I had to break the cover with a marlinespike to get it open. Inside was the usual assortment of a wanderer’s possessions — a suit of good clothes and an overcoat on top, a few books, an old weatherbeaten chart or two, prints of dancing girls, trinkets from foreign lands, a full-rigged ship in a bottle, a plush photograph album, and a bundle of letters tied with a strip of gaudy silk. I dropped everything when I uncovered the letters, sat down on the bunk, and untied the string. They seemed to be old correspondence that had been carried around a long time at sea. The edges of the envelops were worn away in some places. I noticed that the stamps were from a good many different countries, but the handwriting seemed to be all the same.
“The first letter on top was a short one. I opened it and commenced reading. ‘ Dear Frank,’ it began: ‘ I heard this morning that you were in Buenos Aires. I heard what you were doing. I’ve said enough, but this is not the time for me to go back on you, my boy. I will b.e in New York by June, and you can easily reach there by then. I inclose a draft for enough to pay your passage, if you want to come that way. You can go second mate with me, and nothing more said. I haven’t heard
from home ’ Here the letter stopped, and
I found that the last sheet was missing.
“I picked up another letter. This one was dated two years later than the first, and headed 'At Sea.’ ‘My dear Boy,’ it started: ‘It seems a long time since I heard from you. Perhaps when I arrive in Hong-Kong there will be some word. Anyway, I am writing this in hopes that it will find you sometime. For the last few days we have been sailing through the Java Sea, along the course you used to enjoy so much when you were a little boy on the ship, and your mother was alive. This morning we passed Shoalwater Light, and now we are about entering Gaspar Straits. A minute ago I looked along the deck, and remembered how you used
to come running to me with news about everything that hove in sight. It seemed as if you must be just along the deck, and that in a minute or two you would come running aft with something to tell me. My boy, you don’t know what you have done. You are all that is left me in the world now. I miss you every day. ’ I turned the sheets hastily, looking for the end. The letter was signed, ‘Your loving father, Forrest Thorndike.’”
Nichols stopped, and seemed to be wiping his eyes. “You see, it was true, after all,” he said. “ I sat there on the bunk for some time, groping in my mind, without the ability to move. Then, in a flash, the whole hideous disaster took me by the throat, and I cried like a child. Right in the midst of it, I heard some one stirring in the forward cabin, and jumped up in terror. Whatever happened, the Captain must never see that room. I went out, and had just succeeded in locking the door behind me when 1 met him face to face in the passageway.
“ If he’d been worrying about anything those few hours in the after cabin, he didn’t let it show on his face. He had killed men before, I remembered . . . my God, it seemed im-
possible! I wondered if my voice would make a sound, but he spoke first.
“‘Bury the man as soon as you can,’ he said. ‘Nothing can go on till he is out of the way.’
“‘Yes, sir,’ I managed to answer.
“‘Have his things brought into the after cabin,’ he went on. ‘I want to see if we can locate his home.’
“‘Locate his home!’ I said to myself. I felt like laughing — had to force myself to stop. ‘His things have been thrown overboard, sir,’ I said aloud.
“‘What do you mean?’ he cried. ‘We’ll have to answer for them to the authorities!’
‘“I didn’t think,’ I replied. 'There wasn’t much, beyond his clothes — nothing of personal value.’
“‘You made a big mistake ’ he started
in, but I broke away and escaped to the deck. He didn’t follow me.
“I worked in a sort of frenzy that forenoon; as he said, nothing could go on till the body was disposed of. For me, the world itself had stopped meanwhile. I had a talk with the only man forward who struck me as being decent, and asked him if the men knew who Jim Rawlins really was. ‘I’ve found out from some papers in his chest,’ I said, ‘that he assumed his name. Now, it doesn’t make any difference one way or the other, so I want you to tell me what you know.’
"‘So help me God, sir,’ he answered, ‘we
[pgbrk] “THEY GAZED AT EACH OTHER FOR A BRIEF SPACE, WHILE GOD KNOWS WHAT PASSED IN BOTH THEIR HEARTS”
just thought he was Jim Rawlins.’ I felt safe on that score, anyway.
“At noon we were ready for the funeral. I’ve seen many of them at sea, and they always impress me with a certain dramatic solemnity that a funeral ashore doesn’t hold. If the word weren’t incongruous, I’d say that a burial at sea was picturesque. That’s really the secret of the effect; a symbolic appeal, calling to mind man’s kinship with the elements, and showing on the faces of sailors, standing alone in the center of an open field of sea and sky, the spirit that’s dared to penetrate so far by the futile strength of hands. But you can well understand the
added force of this burial for me. I knew that it wasn’t the man’s body that we were sinking, so much as his past; and with him, too, would go a secret that fairly paralyzed me when I stopped to think. I wondered if, with all the rest, the curse would go as well. I found myself dreading the ceremony; it didn’t seem possible that the Captain could stand at the head of the body, and not know.
“We laid him out on a grating, and I convinced myself that there wouldn’t be any hitch at the last. Then I went aft to get the Captain. The men were all standing around the body when we appeared. I noticed that Captain
311
[pgbrk] 312
BRUTALITY
Thorndike had a Bible in his hand, and hoped he wouldn't read anything grueling; I could remember verses that might have unmanned me if he’d said them aloud. We went forward along the deck side by side; I didn’t dare to look at him.
“It would be over in a minute, I told myself. All at once there was a slight disturbance among the crew. A man pushed toward the Captain, whispering for a clear path. I looked around, half anticipating another attack, though it didn’t seem possible that they would outrage such a moment. The man elbowed his way through at last, and went up to Captain Thorndike, holding out something in his hand. From where I was, it looked like a locket on a chain.
‘“I found this behind Jim’s bunk, sir,’ he said. ‘It fell down. It must ha’ been his.’
“ Captain Thorndike took it without speaking, and gazed at it a long while as if in a dream. Then he crushed it in his hand, and stood rigid at the head of the grating, looking off into the sky. My heart felt suddenly dried up, and I couldn’t have spoken for the price of my soul. The men waited, expecting him to begin the service. Instead, he turned and walked aft. The Bible dropped on deck, face down,— doubtless opening at some message of hope and love. When he came to the poop-steps, he stumbled and felt his way along the house like a blind man lost on a strange path. Before I realized all that had taken place, he had reached the companionway and disappeared.
“ I found him kneeling in front of the big chair in the after cabin, with his face sunk in the cushions of the seat. He was making sounds of unbearable grief and pain. He heard my step, but couldn’t control himself. I started to go out, but in the same instant he got up and looked at me.
I’ve killed my boy!’ he said, with the most awful face I ever saw on a living man.
“His glance fell on the locket, still lying in his hand; and suddenly the bitterness and anguish of years broke from him in cries that sounded fore and aft the ship. With a violent motion, he threw the locket away. It fell at my feet, and the picture of a sweet-faced woman looked up at me—a woman who was dead. Then, as unexpectedly as it had risen, his voice died; and the old spirit that had carried him through loss and failure and despair revived in his still undefeated soul.
“‘Go!’ he whispered. ‘Go and get it over with! Leave me alone!’ A second time that day I made my escape and got a breath of air.
“The men were in a panic when I appeared. The cries from the cabin had frightened them, and they had drawn away from the body in superstitious fear.
“‘What is it?’ one of them asked me.
“‘Shut up!’ I said. ‘Come forward with me and bury the man.’
“ I gave the order to cant the grating.
“‘Ain’t you going to say a word of prayer?’ I heard.
“Prayer! But the man was right; I realized that I couldn’t consign the body to eternity without a word of faith. I hesitated, and tried to control my memory; I didn’t think of the Bible lying on the deck.
“‘God forgive him!’ I said. ‘Let go!’ That was his sermon, and his epitaph. ‘God forgive him’—though I can’t say surely which one of the two I had in mind.”
Nichols paused, and in the silence we heard the creaking of oars passing in thedarkness. “That’s about all of it,” he said. “The remainder of the voyage to New York was uneventful; as the Captain had predicted, we didn’t have any more trouble with the crew. After that day he seldom came on deck except to take the sun. Hour upon hour, he’d pace the cabin floor; and at night I’ve seen him through the skylight, sitting in the big chair and looking straight ahead. I met him at meals, but he ate little and spoke only about the ship’s affairs. I doubt if he slept an hour out of every twenty-four.
“When I attempt to realize what was going on in his mind during that run across the Atlantic, I have to stop. It was too hard. For years he’d been blaming himself unjustly; well, at last he had something that he could unquestionably lay at his own door. But consider the tragic fatality of it! This thing had come upon him in the guise of duty, and he’d solved it bravely — ‘according to his lights.’ Luck was against him, that’s all. It played with him cruelly, unmercifully; he was made the whim of chance. Perhaps They wanted to investigate the powers of man’s suffering; or else They wanted sport, and ground him in the wheels of misery. I feel, somehow, as if he beat Them, after all. That’s the lesson — and I am glad. He looked his destiny in the face to the end; he didn’t falter, or make a sound. The victory was his, not Theirs. But the heart sinks to consider what the cost must have been.
“After we had docked in New York, I went uptown again one evening—alone this time. It was getting on toward midnight when I returned to the ship, and the Chinese steward met me at the rail. His teeth were chattering with some excitement, and I couldn’t make out what he said. He had a letter in his hand, and thrust it upon me with evident knowledge of its importance. ‘Belong-y you,’ he muttered.
“The light was burning in the forward cabin, and I leaned over the table and opened the
[pgbrk] “ I FOUND HIM KNEELING IN FRONT OF THE BIG CHAIR IN THE AFTER CABIN "
envelop. I recognized the Captain’s hand at once. The letter was brief, and I remember every word. One isn’t likely to forget a message that sums a lifetime of endeavor in a few impulsive sentences thrown back from the margin of the abyss.
‘“I am done, ’ he wrote. 'I have entered the ship, and brought the accounts to date. You will find everything here. No one shall say that I have dodged my responsibility. I write this to you, because you know and will understand. After all, who had a better right? His life was nothing to himself, even.’ And then, as if something had occurred to him at the last,
some lines were scrawled diagonally across the remainder of the sheet. 'This is the price,’he had written — I suppose they might be called his last words. ‘This is the price, but I would do it again.’
"The steward beckoned me, and I followed him into the after cabin. ‘Cap’n he go,’ said the Chinaman, in one of those comprehensive laconicisms that are the heritage of his deep and ancient race. Captain Thorndike was lying beside the bunk on the floor of his room, shot through the head. He left no message except the note to me. He was gone, as the Chinaman had expressed it, and so the page was closed.”
313
[pgbrk] CLEVELAND’S VENEZUELA MESSAGE
B Y
GEORGE F. PARKER
ILLUSTRATED WITH PHOTOGRAPHS
I WAS stationed in Birmingham, England, as United States Consul, when the Venezuela cloud crossed the horizon. The storm broke without warning. In the middle of December, 1895, the President sent to Congress his message about the boundary lines between Venezuela and British Guiana, and announced, in terms neither mild nor inside the language usual to diplomacy, that, without further delay, the whole dispute must be submitted to arbitration. Suddenly every American in England, from the Ambassador down to the humblest citizen, found himself in an atmosphere highly charged with suspicion. The English press broke forth in denunciation, and diplomatic relations were as good as suspended.
There was in Birmingham an organization known as the Dramatic and Literary Club, and one of its principal functions was to celebrate each year the birthday of Shakespeare. This body had elected me its president for the year, and I had resolved to make the annual dinner a conspicuous feature. In November I had invited our ambassador, Mr. Bayard, as the principal guest of the Club. His reply may give some idea of the feeling in England at that time:
Embassy of the United States, London, Dec. 31, 1895. Dear Mr. Parker: I was out of town when your letter of Nov. 27th arrived. Very soon thereafter a condition of affairs came on which rendered it difficult for me to give you the direct and positive reply to which you were entitled. April 20th was a long way off, and what might occur from day to day it was impossible to foretell. And as matters stand to-day I feel that all plans of enjoyment and pleasant hospitality may be upset and replaced by very different occupations; therefore I accept your suggestion that no harm can come from postponing until the February meeting of your Club the formation of plans for mv visit to you in April next.
By the time February arises the sky may have cleared and present clouds dispersed and with more cheerful hearts we may meet and greet our British kindred.
I will be most glad to come to Birmingham to view its beautiful and varied industries and look in the faces of its citizens, and this I fully expect to do; at the same time, you can comprehend how much there is to make me feel anxious, for there is too much at stake even in the remote risk of a collision between the nations who are the main guardians under God of the world’s civilization.
Sincerely yours,
T. F. Bayard.
George F. Parker, Esq.
About this time, at a large public reception given at the house of Joseph Chamberlain, M.P.,— well known as a friend of America,— Sir Benjamin Stone proposed that the Shakespeare dinner should be made a demonstration of the essential and deep-seated friendship between the two countries.
Cleveland’s Shakespeare Letter Averts a Crisis
Henceforth every effort was made to assure the success of this project, with the result that the annual dinner took on the proportions of an historical event in the district. It was the first time that an American had presided at a Shakespeare dinner in England. The Ambassador was at his best, and prominent literary men were among the speakers. When the toast of the President of the United States was given, I read in response the following letter from Mr. Cleveland:
Executive Mansion, Washington, March 30, 1896.
My dear Mr. Parker: I have received your letter informing me that the Birmingham Dramatic and Literary Club intends to celebrate the birthday of Shakespeare on the 21st of April, and extending to me on behalf of the Club an invitation to be present on that occasion.
Everything that tends to keep alive the memory of Shakespeare, and preserves a proper appreciation of his work, challenges my earnest interest and approval; and though I cannot be with you on the occasion you contemplate, I am glad to know that our American people are to be prominently represented in the celebration.
314
Copyright, 1909, by George F. Parker
[pgbrk] Copyright photograph by Frederick Hollyer, London From the painting by Watts
LORD SALISBURY
ENGLISH PRIME MINISTER AT THE TIME OF THE VENEZUELA BOUNDARY DISPUTE
There is much said and written, in these days, concerning the relations that should exist, bound close by the strongest ties, between English-speaking peoples, and concerning the high destiny that awaits them in concerted effort. I hope we shall never know a time when these ennobling sentiments will be less often expressed, or will in the least lose their potency and influence.
Surely, if English speech supplies the token of united effort for the good of mankind and the impulse of an exalted mission, we do well fittingly to honor the name and memory of William Shakespeare.
Yours very truly,
Grover Cleveland.
The reception of this letter by the press was generous and high-minded; Punch joined the chorus with a page cartoon; and it is safe to say that the ghost which had been raised by the Venezuela message was laid by the Shakespeare letter written by President Cleveland on March 30, 1896.
Lord Salisbury’s Despatch and Olney’s Reply
With the exception of his action in meeting with foresight and promptness the Debs riots in Chicago, nothing in all his public life gave Mr. Cleveland as much satisfaction as the message and correspondence about the Venezuela boundary line. When I returned home from England in December, 1896, I was interested to hear the story from his own lips. It is well known that when the Venezuela crisis was brewing, Mr. Cleveland went down the coast on a hunting expedition. The despatch from Lord Salisbury had been received, after nearly six months of delay; the whole matter had been gone over; the answer to it decided upon — though not written — and the method of its presentation to the country and the world settled.
315
[pgbrk] 316 CLEVELAND’S VENEZUELA MESSAGE
The details were left to the Secretary of State, of whom the President said to me:
“I had gone away all tired out and left the matter wholly in Mr. Olney’s hands. I knew how careful and able he was, but I must confess that I was astonished, upon my return, to find how completely he had worked out the reply to Lord Salisbury’s despatch. I do not think that I have ever had to deal with any official docu-
ment, prepared by another, which so entirely satisfied my critical requirements. It had covered every point in the controversy not only completely but temperately and in unquestionable good taste from a diplomatic point of view. It was vigorous, but it caught the national spirit perfectly. I have never been able adequately to express my pleasure and satisfaction over this assertion of our position, and the country has never shown that it fairly understood or recognized the debt that it owes to Richard Olney.” When the President, upon his return, found everything so well prepared, there remained only his part: the preparation of the message. When finished, it was approved by the Secretary of State, but was not submitted to the Cabinet as a body nor was knowledge of it extended beyond the narrowest limits.
Just before the transmission of the message to Congress, the President started to read it to a member close to him in personal confidence, previous to a meeting of the Cabinet, when a second Cabinet member unexpectedly made his appearance at the door. The manuscript was hurriedly thrust into a drawer anti only commonplace topics were discussed. Later the reading was resumed. When it was finished, the President turned to the listener and asked: “ Now, what do you think of it?” Upon getting the reply, "It seems to me, toward the end, just
Copyright by Brown Brothers and Underwood and Underwood (1908)
TWO PHOTOGRAPHS OF CLEVELAND TAKEN ON A HUNTING AND FISHING TRIP IN SOUTH CAROLINA
[pgbrk] From the painting by Sargent, photographed by Henry Dixon Son, London Published by courtesy of the artist
JOSEPH CHAMBERLAIN
WHO WAS INFLUENTIAL IN MAINTAINING FRIENDLY RELATIONS BETWEEN ENGLAND AND AMERICA AT THE TIME OF THE VENEZUELA CRISIS
[pgbrk] 318
CLEVELAND'S VENEZUELA MESSAGE
From the collection of Robert Coster
MRS. CLEVELAND
From the collection, of Robert Coster
MRS. CLEVELAND
a little bit tart,” he said quickly, shaking his head as he always did when he wanted to put peculiar emphasis upon anything, “That is just what I intended.”
Cleveland’s Judicial Appointments
Few men have been more strongly attached to the independence of our courts or more solicitous for its maintenance than Mr. Cleveland. He said to me within a few months of his death:
“The thing most necessary for this country is to maintain the supremacy of law, and this can only be done by inspiring respect for the judgments of our courts. All the enemies of our society and institutions and of the supremacy in them of the civil power, recognize, as if by instinct, that if they would break them down or undermine them, it can only be done by reducing our courts to impotence. If their decrees are not respected, or the judges who preside over them are not men of the highest reputation for ability and fairness, then all the forces of discontent will unite in an assault upon them.”
He always expressed great pride in his judicial appointments, coupled with regret that the pay of judges was so meager that he had not always been able to command the services of lawyers of the first reputation in a community. He felt that he had always persevered until he had found men suitable in both learning and character, and in that other quality, the judicial mind, which he insisted was, after all, the most vital qualification. While in office, he would
seldom speak, even, of the judges he had appointed; but when he had finally retired he used to follow with great interest the decisions of the judges of his appointment.
He overlooked none of the amenities when making appointments to the higher courts, but consulted the judges as to the standing of the men whose names were under consideration and ascertained their acceptability as associates. He also drew freely upon the leading lawyers for advice. He was thus little given to springing surprises in judicial appointments, and that, too, in spite of the fact that in this, as in other forms of patronage, he chose a good many men who had not been pushed upon him with persistence. When it fell to his lot to appoint a chief justice of the Court of Claims, he never considered any other name than that of Charles C. Nott, an associate justice since the organization of the court; but he did not make this nomination until convinced that no question could possibly arise about his pension when the time for retirement should come.
If nothing else had tended to separate Cleveland from some of the leaders of his party in later days, their attitude toward the courts would have been amply sufficient to produce this effect.
Chief Justice Fuller Chosen for Efficiency as a Business Manager
In 1890 he said one day:
“When I had to assume the responsibility of appointing a chief justice of the Supreme Court
[pgbrk] GEORGE F. PARKER
319
of the United States, in succession to Morrison R. Waite, my first impulse, after the post had been declined by John G. Carlisle, then Speaker of the House, was to tender the office to James C. Carter or some other eminent advocate or leader of the bar, or to Mr. Phelps, then our minister to the Court of St. James. Upon consultation with the associate justices, I found that some elements, generally overlooked, had
to be considered. I discovered that the Supreme Court, like all others, was accustomed to get so far behind in its business, that, in many cases, it took nearly three years to carry important cases to it from the State or lower Federal courts.
“The justices informed me that, as the Court could not be enlarged, because both public and legal opinion were opposed to this process, the one thing needed was a Chief Justice who would also be a man of efficiency as a business manager. This put the whole question before me in a new light, and I delayed the
nomination for a time until I could look about and find the lawyer who possessed all the usual qualifications and also this added one.
“This was a determining factor in the choice of Melville W. Fuller, then almost a stranger to me personally. I am glad to know that my judgment has been justified by results. Within a year, under the new management, the business of the Court was brought so thoroughly under
control that the old-time delays began gradually to disappear, and I have since had the satisfaction of knowing that, while the Chief Justice has shown himself an industrious, safe, and able judge, he has also commended himself as probably the best business manager ever seen at the head of any of our high Federal courts. He has been able so to systematize its work as to eliminate the law’s delays, as far as this is possible. ”
Cleveland Takes his Stand on Civil Service
From the beginning Cleveland took a firm stand on the question of civil service reform
Copyright, 1903, by J. E. Purdy
CHIEF JUSTICE FULLER
[pgbrk] 320
CLEVELAND’S VENEZUELA MESSAGE
During the campaign of 1882 he received from David B. Hill the following letter:
Elmira, Oct. 2d, 1882.
Hon. Grover Cleveland.
My dear Sir: 1 inclose you a letter which I have received from my friend Professor Fiske of Cornell University. It contains some suggestions which I think should be well considered, lie is friendly to both you and me; and 1 think it would be well as far as possible to follow his suggestions. 1 am permitted to send you the letter, as I shall be unable to see you personally. Professor Fiske can do each of us great good, and 1 have no doubt will do so in case your letter of acceptance is satisfactory.
1 remain,
Hastily but faithfully yours,
David B. Hill.
This covered a letter from the late Professor Willard Fiske of Cornell University, which was followed by the suggested draft of a paragraph for the letter of acceptance:
Astor House, New York City, September 23.
My dear Mr. Hill: I congratulate you upon your nomination, and hope to be able, ten weeks from now, to congratulate you upon your election. This last can be rendered certain in one very simple way.
There are — to put the figures low — twenty thousand voters in the State who are especially interested in the matter of a reform of the national civil service. This is, in fact, just now, their only interest in political matters. If Mr. Cleveland’s letter of acceptance (which, for obvious reasons, 1 trust will not be made public until after his competitor has committed himself) contains a paragraph like the one 1 inclose* (simply as a sample specimen), you and he will secure not only these twenty thousand votes, but the help of three of the most influential Republican journals in the State.
But there must be no mistake in the character of the utterances. They must show unmistakable sincerity, and they must show that Mr. Cleveland knows what he is talking about. All the politicians can use the phrase “civil service reform” with admirable glibness, but the twenty thousand reading and thinking men who have given study to this subject can tell by a single sentence whether the speaker or writer has any honest opinion on the matter or not. There must be no vagueness and no exhibition of ignorance.
This suggestion, if carried out, will not lose you a single vote in the Democratic party. It will gain you, 1 believe and know, nearer thirty than twenty thousand Republican votes.
Very truly yours,
W. Fiske.
The Hon. D. B. Hill.
Neither Mr. Hill nor Professor Fiske then knew that Mr. Cleveland would insist upon defining his position upon this question in his own
^suggested draft of paragraph for letter
I am heartily in favor of a most thorough reform in the nation’s administrative service — such a reform as shall give us officials in the civil branches of the government as devoted, as honest, and as well fitted for their duties as are the officers of the military branch.
I believe that the lower grades of the civil service should be filled by the most intelligent youth of the land, selected by means of honestly conducted and thorough competitive examinations, which shall be freely open to the sons of all classes of citizens; that these, as they
language. In his acceptance letter of October 8th he said:
Subordinates in public place should be selected and retained for their efficiency, and not because they can be used to accomplish partizan ends. The people have a right to demand here, as in cases of private employment, that their money should be paid to those who will render the best service in return, and that the appointment and tenure of such places should depend upon ability and merit.
The system of levying assessments, for partizan purposes, on those holding office or place, cannot be too strongly condemned. Through the thin disguise of voluntary contributions, this is seen to be naked extortion, reducing the compensation which should be honestly earned and swelling a fund used to debauch the people and defeat the popular will.
Cleveland Personally Investigates a Charge of Favoritism
There was no office, within the classified service, so unimportant that Mr. Cleveland refused to investigate a charge made by a responsible person, or even by a meddling body, against its occupant. Since his death, I have heard of a case that illustrates his infinite faculty for taking pains.
In 1888 some question arose as to the dismissal of a man named Palmer, a clerk in the Railway Mail Service at Burlington, Iowa. The question had been threshed out in the Post Office Department and Palmer had been removed.
Thereupon, Mr. W. W. Baldwin, a gentleman in Burlington, took up the case, gave some attention to it, and, in order to satisfy himself, wrote directly to the President, recounting the facts as he knew them. He had no acquaintance with Mr. Cleveland, and his only desire was to protest against what seemed to him an inconsistency between profession and act. He assumed that his letter would take the usual course of reference to the Post Office Department, and thence to the bureau directly concerned, so that he might get a formal answer. But he knew little of the man with whom he was dealing. The President took up Mr. Baldwin’s letter himself and collected all the facts about Palmer’s case. Fie then wrote with his own hand the following letter:
Executive Mansion, Washington, May 28, 1888.
W. W. Baldwin, Esq.
Dear Sir: Your letter of May 22d was read by me with astonishment, for I had always believed that
acquire the necessary training, shall be promoted by merit to the higher grades; and that the tenure of all such offices as are filled by appointment shall be, as in every other business, during good behavior; so that in this manner the service may be speedily purified and rendered efficient. I am unalterably opposed to the system of appointment by favoritism, or through partizan influences, as 1 also am to the levying of assessments for partizan purposes upon the employees of the government —a body of men whose plain duty is the service of the whole people and not that of any political body.
[pgbrk] GEORGE F. PARKER
321
Mr. Nash was fullv imbued with a desire to serve the public faithfully in his official position and I had never regarded him as one who needed watching to prevent him from sacrificing the good of the service to political considerations.
On examination it appears that one Palmer was recommended for promotion and increase of pay by Superintendent White of the Railway Mail Service and that he did this upon the representations of Mr. Cole.
What Mr. Cole really thought or professed to think of Mr.
Palmer on the 5 th day of March,
1888, is shown by his letter of that date, and yet prior to that time he had recommended his promotion for the evident purpose, as is indicated in his letter, of retaining the favor of a congressman who had interested himself in Palmer’s behalf.
This appeared to demonstrate such a heedlessness for the good of the service, when his duty came in conflict with political considerations and personal preferences, that he was not thought to be a safe or proper man to retain in a place where much reliance must necessarily be placed upon his representations and recommendations.
On the 15th day of May, 1888, as appears by his letter of that date addressed to Mr. Palmer, a copy of which you inclosed to me, he speaks of his appreciation of the “earnest, faithful, and zealous efforts to make the service in this district creditable,’’ etc., on the part of the man who on March 5, 1888, he regarded as in every respect inefficient and nearly or quite worthless.
In the light of these facts I am sure Mr. Nash’s censures will appear to you, as they do to me, entirely right and creditable to him as a faithful official seeking to protect his branch of the public service against betrayal and demoralization.
1 inclose a copy of Mr. Cole’s letter of March 5th and the copy you sent me of his letter of May 15th, for comparison. Yours very truly,
Grover Cleveland.
Mr. Valentine P. Snyder, now president of the National Bank of Commerce in New York,
was, during the first Cleveland administration, one of the confidential associates of Daniel Manning, Secretary of the Treasury, and Conrad N. Jordan, United States Treasurer. In the course of his work he was requested by the Secretary to make a careful investigation of the record and character of an official high in the service and with large responsibilities.
The case had been put off from time to time, until Mr. Snyder was finally directed to make the inquiry, and to submit his report, with the assurance that it would be final. As he went deeper and deeper into the case, he found that the suspected official had the strongest support from one of the President’s most intimate personal friends.
When the work was done and the report really ready, Mr. Snyder told the Secretary that he hesitated to go to the extreme, lest the President might either be offended or repudiate his action. He went over to the Executive Mansion to lay the matter before Mr. Cleveland. After the whole situation had been carefully explained, the personal element was finally disclosed. But when Mr. Snyder expressed his fears that personal considerations might be permitted to interfere with the action of the department, the President rose to his feet on the other side of the table and, bringing his fist down with all the emphasis of which he was capable, said: “Snyder, I want you to understand that you are to pursue this matter to its remotest consequences. If you find that summary dismissal is right and proper, make your report to this effect, and I will stand by you to the end. No
Copyright, 1909, by Pack Brothers
PAUL MORTON
EX-SECRETARY OF THE NAVY AND PRESIDENT OF THE EQUITABLE LIFE ASSURANCE SOCIETY
[pgbrk] 322
CLEVELAND’S VENEZUELA MESSAGE
personal interest on my part or that of anybody else shall be taken into account when the public service is in question.”
Cleveland’s Opinion of Charles J. Folger
I do not recall that, in the early days of our association, I often heard Mr. Cleveland speak of the campaign of 1882, so far as it related to his candidacy for Governor. But at Princeton, in November, 1907, when the name of Charles J. Folger, the Republican candidate in that year, was brought up in some way, he manifested unusual interest. He said:
“ I do not remember that I ever saw Mr. Folger either before or after the election, but there has been no man for whom I have felt a deeper and more genuine sympathy. Here was a man who, after a long and successful career as a judge in our courts, was elected judge of the most dignified tribunal in his State.
“Unaccustomed to the hurly-burly of politics, he was transferred from this office and became, unwillingly, I was always informed, Secretary of the Treasury in Washington. At that time the office was a hotbed of party intrigue and ambition. He found the atmosphere unfamiliar and the surroundings distasteful, so, while not essentially ambitious, he consented to take the nomination of his party for Governor. He was absolutely unfitted for such a position. Of quiet, studious tastes, he found himself the center of innumerable movements beyond his ken, over which, owing to the manner of his nomination, he could have no control. He was denounced as a tool, a mere machine-made product of latter-day political methods, and, as a result, his defeat was the most crushing that, up to this time, had come to any candidate for a State office.
“To me it seems the very irony of fate that a man of such well-known, unusual capabilities, whose career had been distinguished by conspicuous and honorable service, should have been defeated by me, then wholly unknown outside of my own small community.
I must confess that, even now, a quarter of a century after the event, I am not able to understand it. However, since it was to be, I am glad to feel that neither I nor my friends and supporters ever spoke or wrote a word derogatory to the character of a man for whom, then and ever since, 1 have entertained the most profound respect.
“ I have no doubt, either, that, coming suddenly into the higher public life in this way, 1 was warned of one of the worst pitfalls to be found there. After I became President I encountered a great deal of abuse because of my
refusal to take part in local politics in my own and other States — to help my friends, as it was sometimes called. If I had ever been tempted to do so, I should only have had to think of the gubernatorial campaign of 1882, and the rebuke then administered to such a policy.”
Cleveland and his Biographers
In spite of his long political experience, Mr. Cleveland could never bring himself to deal successfully with newspapers and newspaper men. He wanted them to have the news, but he objected most strenuously to giving it as a favor which should bring him a favor in return. Having no relations with any newspaper, he was equally free from connections with newspaper writers. He never gave his full confidence to any man related to a daily newspaper, whether he was an editor or a reporter. No man, however, could be more appreciative of the pains taken by his friends to place him fairly before the public. I quote from a letter written to me from Marion, Massachusetts, in August, 1890, after the publication in a New York newspaper of a short sketch of his career:
I feel that you will not misunderstand me nor the spirit in which I write if I frankly assure you that of all the things I have seen written of me and my career I like what you wrote, which appeared in the Press, the best.
I want to tell you, too, how much pleased I was with what you did for Mr. Gilder in the matter of the Independent Voter. It was wonderfully done and Gilder is intensely pleased with the manner by which you have set words to ideas which he has been for a long time anxious to have put in shape.
In a letter from Gray Gables in July, 1891, acknowledging the receipt of some magazines containing a compilation of his sayings, he wrote:
I deeply blushed when I read the Belford article which introduced the “Wit and Wisdom.” I hardly have the face to distribute the magazines you so generously sent me. I have put one of them off on Gilder and another on a Providence friend. I think I shall try Joe Jefferson for one, and I shall send to the members of my family. After all, I was very glad to receive them and have no doubt that I shall want every one of them.
The Campaign of 1904
Mr. Cleveland was intensely interested in the presidential campaign of 1904. He wanted to do all within his power to promote a return to sanity in management as well as in principles and candidates. He naturally refused to take any open part in favor of a given candidate, but never made any concealment of his belief that Judge George Gray was both the logical and the strongest candidate.
[pgbrk] GEORGE F. PARKER 323
When I wrote him that some of his friends were desirous that, if possible, he be induced to give his advice publicly, concerning the importance of a sound platform, I received the following reply:
Princeton, April 22, 1904. My dear Mr. Parker: I did not remember that anything was said when you were here looking, in a definite way, toward my making a statement in the shape of an interview touching the political situation. I certainly do not want to do so at present. I am satisfied that in every view my silence is best in present circumstances.
If a time should come when I can convince myself that any good purpose would be subserved by a renewed publication of my opinions or sentiments, I certainly would be glad to have your assistance and advice.
The situation would not be improved by anything from me now. I have a great disinclination to appearing too frequently in the newspapers in the role of “guide, philosopher, and friend."
Yours very sincerely,
Grover Cleveland.
George F. Parker, Esq.,
New York.
Somewhat later, I took up the work of sounding public sentiment further in respect to the declaration of principles to be made by the St. Louis Convention. There was a general fear that the managers of the movement for the nomination of Judge Parker, in their eagerness to promote the interests of their candidate, might overlook the essentials in the making of the platform.
In the meantime there grew up, especially in Georgia and other Southern States, a strong demand for the nomination of Mr. Cleveland himself, and I was the medium of communicating to him knowledge of this inchoate movement. I knew that under no circumstances would he so much as consider the suggestion, which, by this time, had obtained some publicity. He knew that I would attend the convention and that I could reach the Southern men in question, so I carried with me the following letter, with directions to show it if necessary:
Princeton, June 26, 1904. My dear Mr. Parker: 1 leave here for the summer on Tuesday a little after noon, and I am in a confused stir making preparation. Your letter came yesterday.
I have not been able to make out precisely the object of your efforts or the purpose of those acting with you. My idea, however, has been that something of a movement was on foot to bring about another nomination than Parker’s—though I have not supposed that “another nomination” was related to my candidacy.
1 cannot believe now that, in the face of all I have written and said, and in view of conditions as pal-
pable to every friend I have in the world as they are to me, there can be an intention in any quarter to attempt, by any means or in any contingency, to compass my nomination; and yet within a day or two I have read and heard some disquieting things.
I want to do what I can to avoid a charge of permitting misapprehension of my position; and so I say to you as plainly as I can, that all thought of my candidacy must be abandoned as absolutely and inexorably impossible.
Yours sincerely,
Grover Cleveland.
George F. Parker, Esq.,
Astor House, New York.
When the nomination of Judge Parker had been made, and an idle and meaningless platform had been supplemented by the Gold Telegram,— an act of courage unsurpassed in our political history,— Mr. Cleveland’s hopes were raised anew. Neither he, nor the candidate himself, nor any other man with a knowledge of conditions dared to hope for success; but he thought that it might be possible to bring the party back to its old principles and traditions.
As the resulting campaign ran its course, he was discouraged by the compromises offered to those whom he always termed the “wreckers” of the party, but he was sincerely attached to the candidate and desirous of doing whatever he could to promote his interests and the ideas he represented. He consented to make two speeches. All his old interest had been revived. He showed himself far more solicitous for the success of another than he had ever been for himself, and his disappointment over the crushing defeat was far keener than that of the candidate.
It was difficult, from this time forth, to interest him in politics, although he always stood ready to help if his old-time friends and associates would devise something practical. On October 6, 1906, he wrote from his farm at Tamworth, New Hampshire:
I am dumfounded by the nomination of Hearst. If my faith in the intelligence of our people were less, 1 should think this nomination gave a sad impressiveness to the inquiry, “Is the Democratic party to die? ”
Long before the time came for calling the national conventions of 1908, Mr. Cleveland had looked upon their results as foreordained, the Republican by shrewd management and the dictation which he so much hated, the Democratic by absolute default. It seems, after all, a strange destiny that the man who, over a long period, had dominated a disunited party, should have been compelled to witness its disintegration as one of the great forces in our public life.
[pgbrk] BLACK AND WHITE IN THE SOUTH
BY
WILLIAM ARCHER
THE Southern States of North America at present offer to the world a spectacle unexampled in history. It is the spectacle of two races, at the opposite extremes of the color scale, forced to live together in numbers not very far from equal, and on a theoretic basis of political equality. In other regions where white men and black have come into close contact, the circumstances have been, and are, essentially different. In Africa the white man is a conquering invader, living among blacks who are either entirely savage, or obviously and confessedly but little removed from savagery. No question of “social equality” arises, and the question of political rights, where it presents itself at all, is uncomplicated by any predetermined constitutional principle. In a large part of Spanish America, there has been so free an intermixture of many races that it is practically impossible to draw any color line. Families of pure European descent may hold themselves apart, but few of these regions can by any strain of language be called “white men’s countries.” In the British West Indies the whites are so small a percentage of the population as to constitute a natural aristocracy; and in most of the islands the two races live peaceably under the slightly tempered . despotism of crown colony government. Moreover, the white West Indian, even though he may rarely cross the Atlantic, has always England behind him. He is a member of a great white community, which happens to control certain tropical islands, mainly inhabited by blacks. Here he may prefer to pitch his tent; but his essential citizenship is still British. His social and political relations with his black surroundings are not to him a matter of life and death. Whatever their local interest and importance, they do not touch the fountain-head of his polity, the homeland of his race.
But it is his only homeland that the Southern American finds himself compelled to share, on nominally equal terms, with a race which, whatever its merits or demerits, its possibilities or its impossibilities, stands at the extreme of physical dissimilarity from his own. This is a condition of life not easily understood by the
European, and not always very vividly realized even by the Northern American. I have devoted some effort to realizing it, both by personal observation and through the medium of books. The details of my observations I have elsewhere noted. In the following pages I propose to set forth some of the large and essential facts of the situation, as nearly as I can ascertain them, and to state the general trend of the reflections these facts have suggested to me.
Numbers and Vitality of the Negro
In the first place, what are the facts as to the negro’s numbers, distribution, and rate of increase, if any? They are not easy to ascertain: partly because it is nine years since the last census was taken (1900); partly because American vital statistics are very scanty, and, where they can be obtained at all, are apt to be untrustworthy.
It would appear that, roughly speaking, one third of the population of the seventeen Southern States is black or colored. As against some 3 per cent of negroes in the Northern and Western States, there are about 33 per cent in the South. The total colored population of the United States is generally set down at about ten million, nearly nine million dwelling in the South, and something over one million in the North and West.
Now, are the negroes increasing? It used to be thought that they were multiplying very rapidly. Judge Tourgee, in 1884, prophesied that by 1900 they would outnumber the whites in every State from Maryland to Texas. This prediction is far from having fulfilled itself, and appears to have been based on defective enumeration in the census of 1870, which made the rate of negro increase between 1870 and 1880 seem quite inordinate. Now speculation has gone to the other extreme, and prophesies the not very distant extinction of the negro. This view is set forth with uncompromising emphasis by Mr. P. A. Bruce in his “Rise of the New South” (Philadelphia, 1905):
The only cloud of any portentousness hanging over the prospects of the Southern States is the continued expansion of the black population. . . . The fact,
324
[pgbrk] WILLIAM ARCHER
325
however, that the white inhabitants, as a body, are steadily outstripping the black in numbers, is an indication that the evils which are now created by the presence of so many negroes in the South will not relatively and proportionately grow more dangerous.
. . . When the development of the Southern
States along its present lines has reached its last stage, there is reason to think that an even greater relative decline in the numerical strength of the black population will set in. We have already pointed out the probable effect of the subdivision of Southern lands, and the growth of Southern towns, on the numerical expansion of the negro race. As injurious to that race in the end as being shut out of the general field of agriculture, or being subjected to an abnormally high rate of mortality, will be the relentless competition which is one of the conditions of modern life in all civilized communities. The vaster the growth of the Southern States in wealth and white population, the sharper and more urgent will be the struggle of the black man for existence. In order to hold even his present position as a common laborer he will have to exert himself to the utmost, and in doing so to submit to a manner of life that will be even more unwholesome and squalid than the one he now follows, and sure to lead to a great increase in the already very high rate of mortality for his race. The day will come in the South, just as it came long ago in the North, when for lack of skill, lack of sobriety, and lack of persistency, the negro will find it more difficult to stand up as a rival to the white workingman. Already it is the ultimate fate of the negro that is in the balance, not the ultimate fate of the Southern States in consequence of the presence of the negro. The darkest dav for the Southern whites has passed. . . . The
darkest day for the Southern blacks has only just begun.
When I find this forecast cited with approval by Dr. E. A. Alderman of the University of Virginia, it acquires some authority in my eyes; but still it seems far from convincing. It leaves out of account one probability and one certainty. The probability is that what may be called the Hampton-Tuskegee movement — industrial education and moral discipline — will in time so leaven the mass of the negro race as to make it fitter to compete with white labor, and abler to resist the destructive influences on which Mr. Bruce dwells with such gusto. I call this a probability, not a certainty, for it is hard to tell as yet whether the Hampton-Tuskegee spirit is really leavening the mass, or only playing upon the surface. The industrial college at Hampton is barely forty years old; Dr. Booker Washington’s great institute at Tuskegee came into being less than thirty years ago; and the minor offshoots of the movement are of course still younger. They have had no time to give any just measure of their influence in promoting the self-respect and the efficiency of the negro race. But there is no doubt whatever that they are doing a remarkable and (from the negro point of view) a beneficent work; the only doubt is as to whether the work is or is not proceeding fast enough to overtake and counteract the forces that make for degradation.
This, I say, is doubtful; but what is scarcely doubtful is that the South, for its own sake, cannot suffer Mr. Bruce’s prophecy to fulfil itself. The gist of the forecast is, briefly, this: the rural negro, who is admittedly prolific and whose children survive in fair proportions, will gradually be driven into the towns, where all possible influences are leagued against his moral and physical well-being, and where the rate of negro mortality, both infant and adult, is always very high, and often appalling. Thus, according to Mr. Bruce, the "Afro-American” is being inexorably hounded into the jaws of death, and must in due time perish from off the face of the earth. But what is to be the state of the South while this amiable prophecy is working itself out? If the towns are the jaws of death to the negro, what are they to the white man and his children? Putting all question of humanity aside, can any sane civic policy permit negroes to crowd in their thousands into city slums, and there to die like flies in conditions "even more unwholesome and squalid” than those which at present obtain? Why is the rate of negro mortality so high? Simply because the black folk are less able than the whites to resist the poisonous influences of bad sanitation, moral as well as physical. But bad sanitation, though it may be more fatal to one race than to the other, inevitably takes its toll of both. Hear what a Southern health officer has to say on this point:
We face the following issues: First: one set of people, the Caucasian, with a normal death-rate of less than 16 per thousand per annum, and right alongside of them is the negro race, with a death-rate of 25 to 30 per thousand. Second: the first-named race furnishing a normal, and the second race an abnormal, percentage of criminals and paupers. . . .
The negro is with you for all time. He is what you will make him and it is “up to” the white people to prevent him from becoming a criminal, and to guard him against tuberculosis, syphilis, etc. If he is tainted with disease, you will suffer; if he develops criminal tendencies, you will he affected.
What can be more certain than this? And is it to be conceived that the South will deliberately refrain from looking to its physical and moral sewerage until the negro shall have been killed off?
It is not to be conceived, and it is not what is happening. Better sanitary conditions are everywhere being secured, though the movement is slow in the cities of the South. In the North a great improvement has already been effected. In a report on “The Health and Physique of the Negro American” (Atlanta University Publications, No. XI, 1906) we read:
Ten years ago the [negro] death-rate was twice the birth-rate in New York; to-day they are about the
[pgbrk] 326
BLACK AND WHITE IN THE SOUTH
same, with the death-rate steadily decreasing and the birth-rate increasing. Ten years ago the birthrate of Philadelphia was less than the death-rate; today it is six per thousand higher. . . . With the
improved sanitary condition, improved education, and better economic opportunities, the mortality of the race may, and probably will, steadily decrease until it becomes normal.
If there is any permanence and any efficacy in the ‘‘wave of prohibition” that is passing over the South, it must certainly cause a great reduction in negro mortality; and it surely cannot be long before means are found to check the vending of noxious drugs. Unless, in short, the civilization of the South is to stand still while the negro dies off, there seems to be little likelihood of his fulfilling Mr. Bruce’s prognostic. This great and beautiful region cannot possibly find its salvation in making itself a hell for the negro.
When I quoted to Dr. Booker Washington Mr. Bruce’s death-sentence on his people, he was moved to one of his rare laughs. In Dr. Washington’s opinion, which may very well prove to be correct, the natural increase of the negro in the South about keeps pace with that of the white man. The white race, however, is being largely recruited by immigration, so that its numerical preponderance is doubtless increasing. It would appear, then, that unless conditions very greatly alter, there is little chance of the black race outbreeding and submerging the white, but equally little chance of the black race being obliging enough to die out. Conservative statisticians estimate that at the close of this century there will be anywhere from twenty-five to thirty-five million negroes in America.
Taking the Southern States at large, then, we find that one person out of every three is wholly or partly of African blood. It is sometimes maintained that really pure-bred negroes are very rare; but this seems to be a mistake. Professor W. E. B. Du Bois, himself a man of mixed origin and not likely to underestimate the numbers of his own class, thinks that in two thirds of the negroes of the United States there are no “recognizable traces” of white blood. He adds that white blood doubtless exists in many who show no trace of it; but for practical purposes this speculation may be disregarded.
I think we may take it as pretty certain that if, in the South, one person out of every three is of African descent, one person out of every four is either actually or virtually a full-blooded negro. But it must not be supposed that the distribution of the races is by any means even. Some districts, such as the mountainous regions of Tennessee and West Virginia, contain hardly any negroes; while in other districts, not a few, the blacks largely outnumber the whites.
These are no doubt the districts in which the pure-bred black most abounds.
Is There a “Negro Problem’’?
Having ascertained, approximately, the numerical relations of the two races, we are now in a position to consider the problem or problems involved. And first we are confronted with the question, “Is there any real problem at all?”
Some people deny it, or at all events maintain that the problem is created solely by the almost insane arrogance and inhumanity of the Southern white man. This view lingers in the North, among the inheritors of the old abolitionist sentiment. In England it has been roundly expressed by Mr. H. G. Wells, and somewhat more considerately by even so high an authority as Sir Sydney Olivier. I need scarcely say that it is a very popular view among the negroes in the South itself.
For a typical (though moderate) American utterance of this opinion the following may suffice. It is a passage from "Race Questions and Prejudices,” by a distinguished psychologist, Professor Royce of Harvard (International Journal of Ethics, April, 1906);
Scientifically viewed, these problems of ours turn out to be not so much problems caused by anything which is essential to the existence or to the nature of the races of men themselves. Our so-called race problems are merely the problems caused by our antipathies. . . . Such antipathies will always play
their part in human history. But what we can do about them is to try not to be fooled by them, not to take them too seriously because of their mere name. We can remember that they are childish phenomena in our lives, phenomena on a level with a dread of snakes or of mice, phenomena that we share with the cats and with the dogs, not noble phenomena, but caprices of our complex nature.
The attitude of the South, then, in the conception of Professor Royce, is no more rational than that of a woman who shrieks, jumps on a chair, and gathers her skirts about her ankles, because a mouse happens to run across the floor. I should have thought that the wiser tendency of modern science was to divine something more than a “caprice” in so deep-rooted an instinct as the dread even of mice. As for the dread of snakes, it was surely by a slip of the pen that Professor Royce adduced it.
Not at all dissimilar is the judgment of Mr. H. G. Wells. Hearing a great deal of loose, illogical, inconclusive talk on the color question, and having himself taken a “mighty liking” to these “gentle, human, dark-skinned people” as he saw them in a Chicago music-hall and elsewhere, Mr. Wells formed the opinion that there was no reason at all in the Southern frame of
[pgbrk] WILLIAM ARCHER
327
mind. His conclusion is that “these emotions are a cult”; and by a cult he evidently means a contagious fanatical folly.
Now Mr. Wells is a man for whose essential wisdom I have a very high respect. If I were bound to acknowledge myself the disciple of any living thinker, I should have small hesitation in selecting him as my guide and philosopher. But his chapter on “The Tragedy of Color” in "The Future in America” is tinged with what I cannot but take to be a dogmatic impatience of all distinctions and difficulties of race. Before writing it, he might, I think, have asked himself whether the theory of sheer race-monomania was not, perhaps, a rather too simple way of accounting for “emotions” felt with absolute unanimity (in a greater or less degree) by some twenty million Southern white people. The arguments he heard might be weak, ill-informed, inconclusive; the conduct in which the emotions expressed themselves might often be indefensible and abhorrent; and yet there might lie at the root of the emotions something very different from sheer unreason. I think Mr. Wells should have been chary of “indicting a nation” without more careful reflection and a closer examination of evidence.
Sir Sydney Olivier, on the other hand, speaks with the authority of one who has spent many years in close contact with negroes, having been a successful administrator of large communities in which they greatly preponderate. It is impossible to suspect him of hastiness or of a priori doctrinairism. What, then, is his view? In his “White Capital and Colored Labor” (1907) he tells us that both in visiting the United States and in discussing race questions with American visitors to Jamaica, “he found himself, as a British West Indian, unable to entirely account for an attitude of mind which impressed him as superstitious, if not hysterical, and as indicating misapprehensions of premises very ominous for the United States of the future.” He proceeds:
The theory held in the Southern States of America and in some British Colonies, comes, in substance, to this — that the negro is an inferior order in nature to the white man, in the same sense that the ape may be said to be so. It is really upon this theory that American negrophobia rests, and not only upon the viciousness or criminality of the negro. This viciousness and criminality are, in fact, largely invented, imputed, and exaggerated, in order to support and justify the propaganda of race exclusiveness [p. 43].
And again, in another part of his book:
My argument has been that race prejudice is the fetish of the man of short views; and that it is a shortsighted and suicidal creed, with no healthy future for the community that entertains it [p. 173].
I have very real diffidence in contesting the deliberate judgment of a man like Sir Sydney Olivier on a question which he has deeply studied; but I cannot believe with him that the problem is simply one of Southern unwisdom. On the contrary, I believe that, however unwise in much of her talk and her action, the South is in the main animated by a just and far-feeling, if not far-seeing, instinct. That there has been an infinitude of tragic unwisdom in the matter, not in the South alone, no one nowadays denies. But I believe that the problem, far from being unreal, is so real and so dishearteningly difficult that nothing but an almost superhuman wisdom, energy, and courage will ever effectually deal with it.
Let me try to give my reasons for this belief.
White Man’s Land or Brown Man’s Land?
No one, I suppose,— not even Mr. Wells,— would deny that the importation of the African into America was an egregious blunder as well as a monstrous crime. Without him the South would perhaps have developed more slowly during the eighteenth century; but she would have escaped the arrest of development which sums up her history during the nineteenth century. She would have escaped the war by which she strove, with misguided heroism, to perpetuate that arrest of development. She would have escaped the “horrors” of that Reconstruction period which still haunts her memory like a nightmare. She would have escaped the prostration and impoverishment from which she is only now beginning — though very rapidly — to recover. The negro has assuredly been her calamity in the past. To say, as negro writers often do, that he has created her wealth, is to ignore the appalling price she has paid for him. Much more truly may he be said to have created her poverty.
This, however, is certainly not the negro’s fault. He did not thrust himself upon the South: he was no willing immigrant. Historic recriminations, therefore, are perfectly idle — as idle as the attempts of Southern writers to shift responsibility for the slave trade to the shoulders of the New England States. I cast a glance back at history merely to remind the reader that the presence of the negro in America is not the result of a natural movement, an inevitable expansion, a migration springing from economic necessity or from deep impulses of folk-psychology. It is, on the contrary, the outcome of what may almost be called a disastrous accident — of inhuman cupidity in the slave-dealers and economic short-sightedness in the slave-owners.
The upshot, as we find it to-day, is that in a
[pgbrk] 328
BLACK AND WHITE IN THE SOUTH
magnificent country, well outside the torrid zone, and eminently suited to be the home of a white race, one person in every three is colored and one person in every four is physically indistinguishable from an African savage. It would be the extravagance of paradox to maintain that this is a positively desirable condition, preferable to that of a country which presents a normal uniformity of complexion. England, for instance, would certainly not be a more desirable place of residence if one fourth of her population were transmuted into the semblance of Dahomeyans, even supposing that the metamorphosis involved no moral or intellectual change for the worse. A monochrome civilization is on the face of it preferable to such a piebald civilization as at present exists in the Southern States.
Here at once, then, we have a difference between the South and the West Indies, which Sir Sydney Olivier seems strangely to overlook. The West Indies are not climatically fitted to be a “white man’s land”; or, if it was ever possible that they should become one, the chance was lost at the very outset of their history. They are once for all black men’s lands, with a sprinkling of whites governing and exploiting them. It would be much more reasonable for the black to chafe under the dominance of the white, than for the white to resent the presence of the black. But the case in the Southern States is absolutely different. They were explored, settled, organized by white men; by white men their liberties were vindicated. They are fitted by their climate and resources to be not only a white man’s land, but one of the greatest white men’s lands in the world. The black man came there only as a (terribly ill-chosen) tool for their development. When the tool ceases to be a tool and claims a third part of the heritage, the “peripetia” is no doubt dramatic and exceedingly moral, but none the less exasperating to a generation which, after all, was personally innocent of the original crime-blunder. No one enjoys playing the scapegoat in a moral apologue; and the Southern white man would be more than human if he accepted the part with perfect equanimity. At any rate, the West Indian white man has no right to assume an air of superior virtue until the conditions of his case are even remotely analogous. The negro in the West Indies is the essence and foundation of life; in the United States, he is a regrettable accident.
Four Possibilities: I. Extinction
It is time now that we should look more closely into the conditions of this piebald community which a violent interference with the
normal course of race-distribution has established in the Southern States.
The future seems to contain four possibilities, or rather conceivabilities, which may be examined in turn.
(1) Things may “worry along” in the present profoundly unsatisfactory condition, until the negro gradually dies out.
(2) The education of both races, and the moral and economic elevation of the black race, may gradually enable them to live side by side in mutual tolerance and forbearance, without mingling, but without clashing.
(3) Marriage between persons of the two races may — I mean might conceivably — be legalized, and the color line obliterated by “ miscegenation. ”
(4) The negro race might be geographically segregated, by deportation or otherwise, and established in a community or communities of its own.
The first eventuality — the evanescence of the negro race — we have already examined and seen to be highly improbable. Let me only add here that there is one way in which it might conceivably be brought about — a way too horrible to be contemplated, yet not wholly beyond the bounds of possibility. The recurrence of such an outbreak as the Atlanta riot of 1906 might lead to very terrible consequences. On that occasion the white mob found the negroes unarmed, and wreaked its frenzy practically unopposed. But the lesson was not lost on the negroes, and a similar onslaught would, in many places, find them armed and capable of a certain amount of resistance. In that case one dares not think what might happen. Their resistance could scarcely be effectual, in the sense of intimidating and checking white violence. It would, on the contrary, infuriate the mob, and lend some show of justification to their proceedings; while the frenzy would spread from city to city, and the result might quite well be one of the darkest pages in American or any other history. Once let a dozen white men be killed by armed negroes in any city of the South, and a flame would burst out all over the land which would work untold devastation before either authority or humanity could check it. The incident would be taken as a declaration of racial war; everywhere the white mob would insist on searching for arms in the negro quarters; the negroes would inevitably attempt some panic-stricken defensive organization; and the more effective it proved, the more terrible would be the calamity to their race. Not even in the wildest frenzy, of course, could the race, or a tenth part of the race, be violently wiped out; but they might be so dismayed and terrorized
[pgbrk] WILLIAM ARCHER
329
as to lose that natural buoyancy of spirit which has hitherto sustained them, and enabled them to increase and multiply. The prophets of extinction already read hopelessness and a prescience of doom in the negro tone of mind; but, so far, I think the wish is father to the thought. The race, as a whole, is confident, in its happy-go-lucky way. But would their spirit survive a great massacre, followed by an open and chronic Negerhet^ze? I doubt it; and I believe it possible that in this way Mr. P. A. Bruce’s prophecy might be realized more rapidly than he anticipated.
It would be an exaggeration to say that the South lives on the brink of such a horror; but there is no denying that the elements are present which might one day bring it to pass. Sir Sydney Olivier is quite right in calling the feeling of a large class of Southerners toward the negro “hysterical” and ungoverned; and this is just the class that is handiest with its "guns.” Long and laborious treatises have been written to prove, on Biblical evidence, that the negro is a "beast,” and, on scientific evidence, that he is more nearly an ape than a man. These works, no doubt, are scarcely sane; but their insanity is by no means peculiar to their individual authors. The word “extermination” is gravely spoken by men who are not therefore held to be maniacs or even monomaniacs. The South, says Mr. W. E. B. Du Bois, is "simply an armed camp for intimidating black folk”; and where such a condition prevails the possibility of sudden disaster is never far off. To recognize the possibility is not to bring it nearer, but rather to indicate the urgent need of measures that shall place it infinitely remote.
Four Possibilities: II. The Atlanta Compromise
We pass now to the second eventuality — the gradual smoothing away of friction, so that the two races may live side by side, never blending and yet never jarring. This is the conception set forth in Dr. Booker Washington’s celebrated “Atlanta Compromise” speech of 1895, wherein he said, “ In all things purely social we can be as separate as the five fingers, and yet one as the hand in all things essential to mutual progress. ” Is this a possible — I will not say ideal, for that it manifestly is not — but a possible working arrangement?
One thing is evident at the outset—namely, that the fourteen years that have elapsed since Dr. Washington uttered this aspiration have brought its fulfilment no nearer. Both negro education and white education have advanced
in the interim; the “respectable” and well-to-do class of negroes has considerably increased; but the feeling between the races is worse rather than better. Mr. Thomas Nelson Page used to say, “Northerners espouse the cause of the negro as a race, but dislike negroes individually ; while Southerners do not dislike negroes individually, but oppose them as a race.” Ten years ago there was a large element of truth in this saying; but it becomes less and less true with every year that passes. The old-time kindliness of feeling between the ex-owner and the ex-slave is rapidly becoming a mere tradition. No common memories or sentiments hold together the new generations of the two races: they are growing up in unmitigated mutual antipathy. At best, indeed, the Southern kindliness of feeling toward the individual negro subsisted only so long as he “knew his place” and kept it; and the very process of education and elevation on which Dr. Washington relies renders the negro ever less willing to keep the place the Southern white man assigns him. In the North, too, while the dislike of the individual negro has greatly increased, the theoretic forfdness for the race has very perceptibly cooled. Altogether, the tendency of events since 1895 has not been at all in the direction of the Atlanta Compromise. The Atlanta riot of eleven years later was a grimly ironic comment on Dr. Washington’s speech.
This merely means, it may be said, that education has as yet produced no sensible effect upon the inveterate and inhuman prejudice of the South. Nevertheless time and patience may justify Dr. Washington’s optimism. There is no saying, indeed, what a great deal of time and a great deal of patience may not effect. Meanwhile, let us see what is really involved in the idea of the Atlanta Compromise.
We are to conceive, in the first place, an immense advance in the negro race — an advance in education, industry, thrift, and general efficiency. Well, this is possible enough — the negro is certainly civilizable, if not indefinitely, at any rate far beyond the average level he has yet attained. Negro crime might easily be reduced within normal limits; for the race is not inherently criminal, but is rendered so by ignorance, poverty, vice, injustice, and a thoroughly bad penal system. The next fifty years, if present influences continue to work unimpeded, may see a very large increase in the class of law-abiding, property-holding negroes, and possibly a considerable improvement even in the condition of the black proletariat. But supposing that, by the exercise of infinite patience for fifty or a hundred years, a condition something like that indicated in the Atlanta
[pgbrk] 330
BLACK AND WHITE IN THE SOUTH
formula were ultimately attained, would it be desirable? and could it be permanent?
The assumed improvement of conditions would of course imply a steady increase in the numbers of the black race; so that, even with the aid of immigration, the white race would probably not greatly add to its numerical superiority. Let us suppose that at the end of fifty years the colored people were not as one in three, but as one in four, and that this ratio remained pretty constant. Here, then, we should have a nation within a nation, unassimilated and (by hypothesis) unassimilabie, occupying one fourth of the whole field of existence, and performing no function that could not, in their absence, be at least as well performed by assimilable people, whose presence would be a strength to the community.* The black nation would be a hampering, extraneous element in the body politic, like a bullet encysted in the human frame. It may lie there for years without setting up inflammation or gangrene, and causing no more than occasional twinges of pain; but it certainly cannot contribute to the health, efficiency, or comfort of the organism. Is it wonderful that the Atlanta Compromise, supposing it realized in all conceivable perfection, should excite little enthusiasm in the white South?
But to imagine it realized in perfection is to imagine an impossibility — almost a contradiction in terms. We are on the one hand to suppose the negro ambitious, progressive, prosperous, and on the other hand to imagine him humbly acquiescent in his status as a social pariah. The thing is out of the question; such saintlike humility has long ceased to form any part of the moral equipment of the American negro. The bullet could never be thoroughly encysted; it would always irritate, rankle, fester. Dr. Washington’s formula, in renouncing social equality, is judiciously vague as to political rights. But one thing is certain — neither Dr. Washington nor any other negro leader really contemplates their surrender. It is quite inconceivable that the nation within a nation should acquiesce in disfranchisement; and the question of the negro vote will always be a disturbing factor in Southern political life. Either he must be jockeyed out of it by devices abhorrent to democratic principle and more or less subversive of political morality; or, if he be honestly suffered to cast his ballot, he will block the healthy divergence of political opinion in the South, since, in any party conflict, he would hold the balance between the two sides, and thus become the dominant power in the
*Negro labor is indispensable to the South only inasmuch as the negro has kept and keeps out the white laborer.
state. This will always be a danger so long as the unassimilated negro is forced, by his separateness, to think and act first as a negro and only in the second place as an American. Even if the Atlanta Compromise were otherwise realizable, the friction at this point would always continue acute.
The Crux of the Problem
The worst, however, remains behind. If the Atlanta Compromise were possible in every other way, it would be impossible on the side of sex. For two races to dwell side by side in large numbers, and to be prohibited from coming together in legal marriage, is unwholesome and demoralizing to both. I am not thinking mainly of what Mr. Ray Stannard Baker calls “the tragedy of the mulatto. ” 11 seems hard, no doubt, that
marriage should be impossible between a white man and a girl in whose complexion, perhaps, an eighth or sixteenth part of negro blood is entirely imperceptible; but such cases are romantic exceptions, and do not constitute a serious factor in the problem. Negroes, at any rate, will tell you proudly that the young men and women of their race, however light-skinned, hold it no hardship that their choice of mates should be restricted to their own people. Whatever be the truth as to these marginal relations, they are not the essence of the matter. The essence is simply this: the youth and manhood of the white South is subjected to an altogether unfair and unhealthy ordeal by the constant presence of a multitude of physically well-developed women, among whom, in the lower levels, there is no strong tradition of chastity, and to whom the penalties of incontinence are very slight. To say, as many Southerners will, that there is no such thing as virtue among negro women is stupidly libelous; but it is impossible to doubt that the average standard of sexual conduct among the lower orders of the black and brown population is anything but high. And this is not a state of things that can be radically amended in one generation or in two. The completest realization of the Atlanta Compromise that is conceivable within, say, a century would still leave the white male exposed, from boyhood upward, to a stimulation of his animal instincts which, in the peculiar circumstances of the case, cannot be otherwise than unwholesome.
We are here at the very heart of the problem. All other relations are adjustable at a certain sacrifice; but not this one. If the two races are to live together without open and lawful intermingling, it must be at the cost of incessant demoralization to both. “Miscegenation,” in the
[pgbrk] WILLIAM ARCHER
331
sense of permanent concubinage and the rearing of hybrid families, may be held in check by the strong social sentiment against it; but nothing can hold in check the still more degrading casual commerce between the white man (and youth) and the colored woman. It is probably this fact, quite as much as the hideous proclivities of the criminal negro male, that hardens the heart of the white woman against the black race. Nor is the unwholesomeness of the condition measured by the actual amount of laxity to which it leads. Temptation may in myriads of cases be resisted; but this order of temptation ought not to be in the air.*
I venture to say that no one — not even Dr. Washington himself—really believes in the Atlanta Compromise as a stable solution of the problem. The negroes who accept it as an interim ideal (so to speak) never doubt that it is but a stepping-stone to freedom of racial intermixture. They see that so long as constant physical propinquity endures, the color barrier between the sexes is factitious and in great measure unreal; and they believe that at last the race-pride of the white man will be worn down, and he will accept the inevitable amalgamation. The ultimate forces at war in the South are the instinctive, half-conscious desire of the black race to engraft itself on the white stock,| and the no less instinctive horror of the white stock at such a surrender of its racial integrity. This horror is all the more acute — all the more morbid, if you will —- because the white race is conscious of its own frailty, and knows that it is, in some sense, fighting a battle against perfidious nature. It is a hard thing to say, but I have little doubt it is true, that much of the injustice and cruelty to which the negro is subjected in the South is a revenge, not so much for sexual crime on the negro’s part, as for an uneasy conscience or consciousness on the part of the whites. It is because the black race inevitably appeals to one order of lower instincts in the white, that it suffers from the sympathetic stimulation of another order of lower instincts.
Four Possibilities: III. Amalgamation
This brings us, of course, to the third of the conceivabilities above enumerated — the legalization of marriage between the two races. To the white South, nothing is more inconceivable: to the critics of the white South,
nothing is more simple. Which of them is in the right?
It is significant that none of these outside critics puts the slightest faith in the Atlanta Compromise. They see quite clearly that the two races cannot live together and yet apart. Their solution is the obvious one of free intermixture, and they cannot understand why the South should be so inveterately opposed to it. Why make such a fuss, they say, over such a simple matter?
And then comes a long array of arguments to minimize, in general, the significance of race, and, in particular, the gap between the white race and the black. Racial purity is a vain imagination; there is no such thing, at any rate among European peoples; and if it existed it would only be a limitation and a misfortune to the people afflicted with it. Most of all is the Anglo-Saxon race ridiculed as a historic fallacy. The South, which boasts itself almost the last stronghold of pure Anglo-Saxondom, is told that the pure Anglo-Saxon is a myth and a superstition. As to the negro, we are assured that we were all negroes once, or something very much to that effect. At any rate, it is asserted that the Mediterranean races, with whom western civilization originated, were in great part of negro origin. Skull-measurement and brain-weight are called in to prove — whatever the particular disputant wants to prove. Special qualities are claimed for the negro — such as a rich imagination, an innate courtesy, and a strong musical faculty; and it is argued that these are the very things of which the (so-called) Anglo-Saxon race stands most in need. Great play is made with the quasi-scientific modern Rousseauism which avers that our barbarian ancestors were better men than we, and thence argues that there is little or no real gap between the savage of to-day and the civilized man. Weismannism is pressed into the service to show that, as the aptitudes and tendencies that we sum up in the word civilization are acquired and therefore (it is argued) un-transmissible, the white child can have profited nothing by its ancestors’ centuries of upward struggle from barbarism, while the black child cannot be in any way handicapped by his descent through untold ages of savagery. We are even assured that civilization has sprung from and must be maintained by “the commingling
*Dr. Booker Washington said to Mr. Wells: “May we not become a peculiar people — like the Jews? Isn’t that possible?” What so long kept the Jews a peculiar people was the constancy with which Jewish women declined to intermingle w'ith the Gentiles around them. If negro women showed such a spirit of racial chastity, the problem would be very different.
tOf course this does not imply that many individual negroes would not be as unwilling as any white man or woman to marry outside their color limits.
It is on the whole very difficult to state my point in the above paragraph without seeming to imply a great deal more of conscious and formulated will than I am, as a matter of fact, assuming. There are doubtless thousands of negroes who oppose a race-pride of their own to the race-pride of the whites, and hundreds of thousands who have no conscious desire whatever regarding the future of their race. I am trying to state what I believe, rightly or wrongly, to be deep instinctive tendencies, which seldom, perhaps, emerge into consciousness.
[pgbrk] 332
BLACK AND WHITE IN THE SOUTH
of all with all, the general 'pan-mixture,' the universal ‘half-breed.’”*
Fortunately it is quite unnecessary that I should plunge into the mazes of ethnological controversy. It is sufficient for my present purpose to note that controversy, and very lively controversy, exists. The practical equality of the two races is so far from being a point on which all authorities are agreed, that it may rather be called a paradox which charms a certain order of mind by reason of its very audacity. So, too, with the opinion that, whether the African race be or be not inferior, it possesses qualities that the European stock needs, and ought to accept with gratitude. Whether true or false, this is, at present at any rate, a quite undemonstrated speculation. Even Sir Sydney Olivier, who maintains in general that a man of mixed race is “potentially a more competent vehicle of humanity,” advances no proof of the benefits of the particular mixture in question which can for a moment be expected to carry conviction to the Southern white man. The South, then, is urged by the amalgamation theorists to embark upon, or submit to, what is at best a great experiment. It is to quell its higher instincts (for so it regards them, rightly or wrongly) and commit what it feels in the marrow of its bones to be a degrading race-abnegation, in deference to a half-scientific, half-humanitarian opinion, held by certain theorists outside its own boundaries, to the effect that, after all, there is no great difference between black and white, and that the complexion of the future will certainly be a uniform yellow. Can any one blame the South for answering: "No, thank you! If you in England or in New England are tired of being white men, and sigh for the blessings of an African blend, we can send you several million negroes, of both sexes, who will no doubt be happy, on suitable terms, to intermarry with your sons and daughters. For our part, we are content with our complexion as it is. We see no reason to believe that the African slave-trade was the means adopted by a beneficent Providence for the ultimate improvement of our Anglo-Saxon stock; nor, on the other hand, can we accept it as a just punishment for the sins of our fathers that our race, as a race, should be merged and obliterated in indiscriminate hybridism.”
I do not pretend, of course, that the fixed antipathy of the South to the very idea of amalgamation is a purely rational one. Who is so foolish as to look for pure reason in aught that concerns the obscure fundamentals of life? What I am trying to show is that, whatever irrational elements may mingle with it, the
*Jean Finot, “ Race Prejudice,” London, 1906, p. xv.
Southern sentiment has a solid and sufficient nucleus of reason. The advantages of fusion, as between such antipodal races as the white European and the black African, are, to say the least of it, unproved; and a race may be forgiven, surely, which declines to try on its own body, so to speak, so problematic and so irremediable an experiment. For, once made, this experiment cannot be unmade. The South must choose between definitely renouncing its position as a "white man’s land” or struggling to maintain it. What wonder if it feels that it has no choice in the matter?
The Races Not Equal
I have stated the case at the very lowest in saying that the advantages of fusion are unproved. Though it is not essential to my position; I must confess that my personal belief goes much further, and that the disadvantages of fusion are, to my thinking, proved beyond all reasonable doubt. I have not hitherto emphasized the essential and innate inferiority of the negro race, because my argument did not demand it. But the fact of this inferiority seems to me as evident as it is inevitable. However fallacious may be the boundaries between this and that European race, the boundary between the European and the African is real, and not to be argued away. The European is the fruit of untold generations of upward struggle, the African of untold generations of immobility. At the very dawn of history, the ancestors of the white American had advanced to a point beyond that which the ancestors of the Afro-American had attained when they were shipped across the Atlantic from fifty to two hundred years ago. That the negro race has some very amiable qualities is not denied. It is not denied that civilization has brought with it certain disadvantages and corruptions, and that the white savage is in some ways a more deplorable phenomenon than the black savage. Nor is it denied that the negro, in virtue of his strong imitative instinct, has, in many cases, shown a remarkable power of taking on a certain measure of civilization. But all this does not practically lessen the huge historic gap between the two races. Even if we admit the innate power of the negro to overtake the white man in intellectual grasp and moral stability, we must in reason allow him a few centuries to make up his millenniums of arrearage. Whatever it may become in the course of ten or fifteen generations, the negro race here and now is inferior to the white race, not only because of its "previous condition of servitude,” but, ultimately and fundamentally, because of its recent condition of savagery.
[pgbrk] WILLIAM ARCHER
333
Therefore the white race, in accepting amalgamation, would be derogating from its birthright and climbing down the scale of humanity.
Our theorists are, on the whole, too much inclined to confound instinct with prejudice. It is absurd to class as pure prejudice the white man’s preference for the color and facial contour of his race. This is no place for an analysis of our sense of beauty; but to maintain offhand that it is an unmeaning product of sheer habit, with no biological justification, is simply to shirk the problem and postpone analysis to dogma. Does any one really believe that the genius of Caesar and Napoleon, of Milton and Goethe, had nothing to do with their facial angle, and could have found an equally convenient habitation behind thick lips and under woolly skulls? The negro himself (as distinct from the mulatto rhetorician) takes his stand on no such paradox. Whoever may doubt the superiority of the white race, it is not he; and it is a racial, not merely a social or economic, superiority to which he does instinctive homage. It does not enter his head to champion his own racial ideal, to set up an African Venus in rivalry to the Hellenic, and claim a new Judgment of Paris between them. If wishing could change the Ethiopian’s skin, there would be never a negro in America. The black race, out of its poverty, spends thousands of dollars annually on “anti-kink” lotions, vainly supposed to straighten the African wool. The brown belle tones her complexion with pearl powder; and many a black mother takes pride in the brown skin of her offspring, though it proclaims their illegitimacy. There cannot be the smallest doubt that amalgamation, in the negro’s eyes, means an enormous gain to his race. It means ennoblement, transfiguration. It is quite natural that he should not too curiously inquire whether the gain to him would involve a corresponding loss to the white man. That is the white man’s business, not his. The one thing his instinct tells him is that, if he can break down the white man’s resistance and make the Southern States a brown or yellow man’s land, he will have achieved a splendid racial triumph.
The Case for the Mulatto
It is urged, as we have already seen, that the black man’s gain would not be the white man’s loss, but that the black race would bring to the white certain qualities of which it stands sorely in need, the result of the mixture being a more competent “vehicle of all the qualities and powers that we imply by humanity.” Has experience justified this speculation? We have ample experience to go upon — in South America, in the West Indies, in the Southern
States themselves. The mulatto exists and has existed for generations, not in hundreds or thousands, but in millions: in what respect has he proved himself superior to the pure Spaniard, or Portuguese, or Anglo-Saxon? Does South American history bear testimony to his political competence? Have his achievements in science, in art, in literature, in music, been superior to those of the un-Africanized peoples? Or, waiving the question of superiority, has he even, in these domains, produced meritorious work in any fair proportion to his numbers? I do not say that it is impossible to make a sort of case for him, by the ransacking of records and the employment of a very indefinite standard of values. But I do most emphatically say that no conspicuous and undeniable advantage has resulted from the blending of bloods, such as can or ought to counteract the instinctive repugnance of the South.
In a work entitled “Twentieth Century Negro Literature,” published in 1901, Mr. Edward E. Cooper, a mulatto journalist, quotes Byron’s lines:
You have the letters Cadmus gave;
Think ye he meant them for a slave?
and then comments as follows:
Now Cadmus was a black African slave, captured in war; so was AEsop, the world’s greatest fabulist; so was Terence, among the grandest of Rome’s lyric poets; so was Pushkin, the national poet to-day of Russia; so was Alexandre Dumas, the first, the greatest, not only of French novelists, but of novelists of all times, and the infinite storehouse from which all novelists draw, Honore de Balzac and Charles Dickens to the contrary notwithstanding.
This writer can scarcely mean what he says — namely, that Alexandre Dumas and the rest were all black African slaves captured in war. We must interpret him liberally, and take him to be simply asserting the literary genius of the African race, whether pure or blended. A better case than this might doubtless be made for it; but a ten times better case would still be very far from a good case. And Mr. Edward E. Cooper is a fair average specimen of the negro champion of negro genius. Another spokesman of the race, by the way, in the same collection of essays, argues that if the Southern clergy had done their duty in denouncing lynching, there would have been no assassination of President McKinley, “nor would there be anywhere such an illiberal public sentiment as would openly criticize our Chief Executive for dining a representative member of the race whose feasts even Jupiter did not disdain to grace.”
[pgbrk] 334
BLACK AND WHITE IN THE SOUTH
A Biological Argument
To wind up this attempt to place on a basis of reason the Southern horror of amalgamation, I return for a moment to Sir Sydney Olivier’s argument on the point.* He says:
There may naturally be aversion on the part of and a strong social objection on behalf of the white woman against her marriage with a black or colored man. There is no correspondingly strong instinctive aversion, nor is there so strong an ostensible social objection to a white man’s marrying a woman of mixed descent. The latter kind of union is much more likely to occur than the former. There is good biological reason for this distinction. Whatever the potentialities of the African stocks as a vehicle for human manifestation, and I myself believe them to be exceedingly important and valuable, . . . the
white races are now, in fact, by far the farther advanced in effectual human development, and it would be expedient on this account alone that their maternity should be economized to the utmost. A woman may be the mother of a limited number of children, and our notion of the number advisable is contracting: it is bad natural economy, and instinct very potently opposes it, to breed backwards from her. There is no such reason against the begetting of children by white men in countries where, if they are to breed at all, it must be with women of colored or mixed races. The offspring of such breeding, whether legitimate or illegitimate, is, from the point of view of efficiency, an acquisition to the community, and, under favorable conditions, an advance on the purebred African.
To this I have nothing to object, save that it manifestly and in its very terms does not apply to the Southern States of America. Sir Sydney does not intend it so to apply; but when he proceeds to speak of the Southern States, he somehow neglects to draw the necessary distinctions. The conditions he has in mind in the above paragraph are those of a black man’s land, not of a white man’s land. 11 may readily be granted that a fundamentally black community gains by the infusion of white blood, though the circumstances of the “first cross” are scarcely agreeable to civilized sentiment. There can be little beyond sheer animalism in the relations between a white man and a black woman; and such parentage cannot be reckoned the most desirable. This feeling, however, is perhaps a mere superstition; the science of eugenics is not yet far enough advanced, I take it, to afford us any authoritative guidance. Sir Sydney Olivier, at all events, rejects without hesitation the view that the mulatto is inferior, not only to the white, but to the pure black. The mulatto element in a black community, he maintains, is a distinct gain; and the larger it is
*I do not dwell on his surely unadvised initial statement that the “ barriers ” between white and black “ are not different in kind or in strength from those which once separated neighboring Kuropean tribes.” I presume that “once” must be taken as referring to prehistoric ages, reconstructed on scanty ethnological evidence.
the better. So far I am quite willing to follow him; but surely the same process of reasoning, applied to a white community, must lead to exactly the opposite conclusion. It is this fundamental distinction between a black and a white community that Sir Sydney either ignores or declines to take into account. The South is obviously not a country where, “if white men are to breed at all, it must be with women of colored races.” It is a country where a pure white race increases rapidly in spite of the disturbance (economic and sexual) undoubtedly set up by the constant propinquity of a black race. In bygone days, when the black race was a herd of human chattels with no political or social rights, a great deal of intermixture took place. It was, as Sir Sydney would doubtless admit, morally bestial and degrading; but on the principles he lays down, and on the assumption that slavery was part of the eternal scheme of things, it was doubtless good policy, inasmuch as it improved the breed of the black community — the community of slaves. But when the black community ceased to be, in its very nature, a thing apart — when its members became freemen and citizens, indistinguishable, in constitutional theory, from members of the white community — then the conditions entirely altered. It was one thing to produce a superior breed of slaves; it is quite another to go on producing an inferior breed of citizens, and to legalize the production of such a breed. “ But I deny the inferiority!” Sir Sydney will say. “I contend that the good qualities of the white race are preserved, and are reinforced by the addition of certain very valuable qualities which are the special endowment of the black race.” It is not very easy to see why, if this argument hold good, Sir Sydney should discountenance the mating of the black man with the white woman. Either the African strain is valuable or it is not; if it is, why should there be any “bad natural economy” in such unions? Waiving this point, however, I think we have already seen pretty clearly why Sir Sydney’s argument meets with scant acceptance in the South. The plain reason is that it opposes to a deep-rooted instinct a wholly unproved speculation. The South has not discovered, in its own pretty considerable experience, the advantages of hybridism as compared with purity of white blood; nor does Sir Sydney himself advance anything that can possibly be called proof of his opinion. A white nation can scarcely be expected to renounce its racial integrity on the chance of breeding an occasional Alexandre Dumas.
Sir Sydney Olivier’s biological principle, strictly and consistently applied, would issue in
[pgbrk] WILLIAM ARCHER
335
a law making marriage legal between any male and a female lower in the color scale than himself, but illegal between any female and a male with a larger proportion of African blood. Such a law would of course be absolutely impossible of enforcement; and equally inconceivable in practice would be any other partial and restricted legalization of inter-racial unions. There is no middle course between a resolute maintenance of the legal barrier between the races and a complete acceptance of the principle of amalgamation. If the legal barrier were ever removed, it would mean such a relaxation of public sentiment as would insure the very rapid increase of the hybrid race. Three or four generations would see the South a brown man’s land, with, no doubt, a rapidly narrowing white aristocracy. In another three or four generations the prevailing complexion of the North would be sensibly affected; and, finally, the whole American nation would be typically negroid, the pure white man being the more or less rare exception. For my part, I cannot but sympathize with the sentiment that violently repudiates such a contingency. I do not understand how any white man who has ever visited the South can fail to be dismayed at the thought of absorbing into the veins of his race the blood of the African myriads who swarm on every hand.
For the South itself, at any rate, the discussion is purely academic. Amalgamation is a thousand leagues remote from the sphere of practical politics. I have been endeavoring to state for outsiders the case of the South as I understand it. I may have stated it wrongly, or understated it; but no one can possibly overstate the resolve of the South that the color line shall not be obliterated by “miscegenation.”
Four Possibilities: IV. Segregation
Lastly, we have to consider the fourth conceivable eventuality — the geographical segregation of the negro race, whether within or without the limits of the United States.
This is usually ridiculed as an absolutely Utopian scheme, and at the outset of my investigation I myself regarded it in that light. But the more I saw and read and thought, the oftener and the more urgently did segregation recur to me as the one possible way of escape from an otherwise intolerable situation. Not, of course, the instant, and wholesale, and violent deportation of ten million people — that is a rank impossibility. Between that and inert acquiescence in the ubiquity of the negro throughout the Southern States, there are many middle courses; and I cannot but believe that the first really great statesman who arises
in America will prove his greatness by grappling with this vast but not insoluble problem. And, assuredly, the sooner he comes the better.
We have seen that the negro race is not dying out, or that, if it does die out, it can only be, so to speak, at the cost of Southern civilization — through the indefinite continuance of insanitary and barbarous conditions. We have seen that the Atlanta Compromise is illusory and impracticable; that there is no reasonable hope that the two races will ever live together, yet apart — in economic solidarity yet without social or sexual contact. We have seen that the essence of the whole situation lies in the negro’s inevitable ambition (even though it be unformulated and largely unconscious) to be drawn upward, through physical coalescence, into the white race, and the white man’s intense resolve that, on a large and determining scale, no such coalescence shall take place. Now this state of war — for such it undoubtedly is — will not correct itself by lapse of time. It will continue to degrade and demoralize both races until active measures are taken to put an end to it. Though I sympathize with the white man’s horror of amalgamation, 1 neither approve nor extenuate the systematic injustice and frequent barbarity in which that horror expresses itself. The present state of society in the South is as inhuman as it is inconsistent with the democratic and Christian principles which the Southern white man so loudly, and in the main sincerely, professes. The Jim Crow car, and all such discriminations in the system of public conveyance, are, I believe, necessities, but deplorable necessities none the less. The constant struggle to exclude the negro from political power is at best a negative and unproductive expenditure of energy, at worst a source of political dishonesty and corruption. The wresting of the law, whether criminal or civil, into an instrument for keeping the negro in a state of abject serfdom, is a scandal and a disgrace to any civilized community. The constant resort to lawless violence and cruelty in revenge for negro crime (real or imaginary) is a hideous blot upon the fair fame of the South, if not rather an impeachment of her sanity. The truth is, in fact, that constant inter-racial irritation leaves neither race entirely sane, and that abominable crime and no less abominable punishment are merely the acutest symptom of an ill-omened conjuncture of things, which puts an unfair and unnatural strain upon both black and white human nature. The criminal stupidity that brought the negro to America cannot be annulled by passively “making the best of it.” If its evil effects are to be counteracted, corrected, and wiped out, it must be through an
[pgbrk] 336
BLACK AND WHITE IN THE SOUTH
active and constructive effort of large-minded statesmanship.
Bach to Africa?
The deportation of the negro has been urged by many American writers, generally in a somewhat illogical fashion. They start by asserting his total incapacity for self-government, as demonstrated in Haiti, Liberia, and elsewhere, and then recommend the foundation of a new negro republic in some undefined portion of Africa. A curious scheme was put forward in 1889 in an anonymous book entitled “An Appeal to Pharaoh,” written, I believe, by Mr. Carlyle McKinley, of Charleston, South Carolina. Mr. McKinley’s proposal was to promote “the voluntary and steady emigration of the active maternal element” of the negro race. He calculated that if 12,500 child-bearing females, between the ages of twenty and thirty, could every year be induced to emigrate (taking their husbands with them), the whole “maternal element” of the colored population would be removed within fifty years. The plan was apparently that as soon as a child was born to a young negro couple, they were to be persuaded to emigrate, and that thus the prolific negro would gradually be transferred to the new negro commonwealth, only the sterile remnant of the race being left to die off at their leisure. It is unnecessary to criticize this scheme, which is now twenty years old, and does not seem to have found any serious champions. I mention it as«perhaps the most carefully considered of the suggestions for an exodus to Africa.
In no form does the African project seem to me at all a hopeful one. The habitable portions of Africa are, I take it, pretty well staked out among the European powers, so that an elaborate and costly international arrangement would be necessary before the requisite territory would be available. But supposing this difficulty overcome, would the United States be justified in simply dumping its colored population in Africa, and then washing its hands of them? It might just as well drive them into the sea and have done with it. The negro character has shown no fitness for the very difficult task of combined pioneering and nation-building that it would have to encounter. To the lower elements in the race, the return to Africa might mean repatriation in the sense of a not unwelcome home-coming to savagery; but the better elements would suffer greatly in such a relapse, while of their own strength they probably could not resist it. Toward these better elements, and indeed toward the whole race, the United States has a responsibility that it could not, and certainly would not, shirk; so that it would
in effect have to undertake the policing of a distant, troublesome, and unsatisfactory dependency, which might, in addition, not improbably involve it in international difficulties. This would be preferable to the present state of things, but still far from a desirable solution of the problem.
The same objections apply to a settlement in South America, the Philippines, or anywhere else outside the United States. Deportation, in a word, is beset with disadvantages. It would be ruinously costly and indefensibly cruel. If there ever was a time for it, that time is past.
A Negro State ?
What, then, is the alternative? Manifestly concentration within the United States — the formation of a new State, which should be, not a white man’s land, but a black man’s land.
Is this physically possible? Is there enough unoccupied territory to permit of such a concentration? Of absolutely unoccupied territory there probably is not enough; but those who have studied the matter tell us that there is plenty of territory so thinly occupied that the white settlers could be removed and compensated at no extravagant cost. According to the Honorable John Temple Graves:
Lower California might be secured. The lands west of Texas might be had. But the Government does not need to purchase. Four hundred million acres of Government land is yet untaken and undeveloped in the West. Of these vast acres the expert hydrographer of the Interior Department has reported that it is easily possible to redeem by irrigation enough to support in plenty a population of sixty million people.
We may liberally discount this estimate, and yet leave it unquestionable that the resources of the United States are amply sufficient to admit of the establishment of a new State without any exorbitant disturbance of the existing distribution of territory.
It would be absurd for me to forecast in any detail the methods by which the concentration should be brought about. They must be devised and elaborated by the great American statesman who is to come. If he can successfully grapple with this colossal task, he will deserve to rank with Washington and Lincoln in the affections of his countrymen. It may be pretty safely predicted that he will attempt no sudden and forcible displacement of the mass of the negro race. Rather he will establish local conditions that shall tempt the younger and more enterprising negroes to migrate of their own free will; while he will probably fix
[pgbrk] WILLIAM ARCHER
337
by legislation a pretty distant date — say five-and-twenty years ahead — after which it shall be competent for the various State governments* forcibly to evict (with compensation) and transplant to the new State any negroes under, say, forty-five years of age still lingering within their boundaries. There will be no need at any time to disturb old or middle-aged negroes who are disinclined to start life afresh under new conditions.
The probability is, however, that if once the new State were judiciously set on foot, the difficulty would be so to moderate the westward rush as to prevent an unnecessary dislocation of the labor-market in the South. There is not the least doubt that negro labor could and would be gradually replaced by white labor; but a sudden negro exodus on a large scale would certainly embarrass agriculture and other industries in most of the Southern States. It would be one of the main problems of the case so to regulate the flow of migration as to make it continuous, yet not excessive.
There seems to be little doubt that the negro race, as a whole, would welcome any reasonable means of escape from the galling conditions of their life in the South. On the other hand, there is no doubt whatever that all the more intelligent members of the race are staunchly and even pathetically loyal to American ideals, and would be very unwilling to live under any other than the American form of government. In the new State, they would be members of a negro community without ceasing to be American citizens. It might be necessary at first to establish some provisional government like that of an American territory or English crown colony; but as soon as the country was sufficiently settled, and the mechanism of life in full swing, there could be no difficulty or danger in admitting the new community into the Union, with full State rights. Negro education has enormously progressed since the bad old days of_ Reconstruction; and there is no reason to doubt that the population could furnish a competent legislature, executive and judiciary. Legislative aberrations would be checked by the Supreme Court of the United States; and if things went thoroughly wrong, and a new Haiti threatened to develop in the heart of the Republic, why, United States troops would always be at hand to hold a black mob or a black adventurer in awe. But it would doubtless be a fundamental principle that no white man could vote or hold office in the negro State, while, reciprocally, no colored man could vote
*I assume that, the principle once accepted, there will be small difficulty in arranging the respective rights and duties in this matter of the central and the State governments. The color problem is a national concern, if ever there was one.
or hold office in the white States.* The abrogation of the Fifteenth Amendment would remove from the Constitution of the United States a constant source of trouble.
I am far from denying that this racial readjustment would demand a huge effort and a very large expense. In many individual cases it might cause a good deal of hardship to people of both colors. But that both colors would enormously and permanently benefit by the effort seems to me indubitable. It would be, before everything, an act of justice to the negro. It would enable him to build up a polity of his own, on lines to which his mind is already habituated. It would offer him full opportunity for the development of his talents and ambitions, unhampered by any social discriminations or disabilities. The Hampton-Tuskegee movement has been fitting great numbers of the race to carry out the necessary tasks of construction and organization involved in the material and moral upbuilding of the new community. Every aid should, of course, be afforded for the transference to the new domain of all negro universities, colleges, and similar institutions. I see little reason to doubt that the sense of new and unhampered opportunity would stimulate the mental and moral energies of the race, and beget a higher competence, a new self-respect. They would feel that they were on trial before the eyes of the world, that their future was in their own hands and that they must vindicate their claim to the rights and liberties of civilized humanity. They would have a very fair chance of success; and in case of failure they would at worst relapse upon some sort of crown colony government. A regularly established and benevolent despotism would, at any rate, be better than the capricious and malevolent despotism to which they are now subjected in the South.
“But," it may be said, “the rights- and liberties of civilized humanity include the right to move freely hither and thither over the face of the earth. This right, at any rate, would be denied to the Afro-American, inclosed within the ring-fence of his own State.” There is, I think, a sufficient answer to this objection. The right to travel would not be denied to the negro. Nor would he be debarred from emigrating and settling abroad among any community that was willing to receive him. It is, I think, becoming more and more clear that the right of every man, white, black, or yellow, to effect a permanent settlement outside his own country, is subject to this qualification. The idea that all the world ought to belong equally to all men, and that
*The negro State would, of course, send to Congress its two Senators and its due proportion of members of the Lower House.
[pgbrk] 338
MILDRED McNEAL-SWEENEY
rational development tends toward an unrestricted intermingling of races, seems to be signally contradicted by the trend of events. Is it not the great essential for the ultimate world-peace that races should learn to keep themselves to themselves?
If the negro State is established with any success, I do not believe that its inhabitants will feel it an undue restriction on their liberties that they are forbidden to settle in other parts of the Union. The population question will gradually regulate itself. A fairly civilized people, with limited opportunities of expansion, will soon realize the penalties of breeding beyond its means of subsistence.
And what of the South, when this act of justice to the negro shall have been performed? It will awaken, as from a nightmare, to the realization of its splendid destiny. No longer will one of the richest and most beautiful regions of the world be hampered in its material and
spiritual development by a legacy of ancestral crime. All that is best in the South— and the Southern nature is rich in elements of magnanimity and humanity — abhors the inhuman necessities imposed upon it by the presence of the negro. The Southern white man writhes under the criticisms of the North and of Europe, which he feels to be ignorant and in great measure unjust, yet which he can only answer by an impotent “You do not know! You cannot understand!” He has to confess, too, that there is much in Southern policy and practice that even the necessities of the situation cannot excuse — much that can only be palliated as the result of a constant overstrain to which human nature ought never to be subjected. Remove the cause? of this overstrain, and a region perhaps the most favored by nature of all in the Western Hemisphere will stand where it ought to stand — in the van, not only of civilization, but of humanity.
"IF I HAVE KEPT MY HEART SWEET”
BY
MILDRED McNEAL-SWEENEY
IF I have kept my heart sweet As the brown field,
Then all were mine — the winds along,
The bird’s returning song,
The sowing and the young wheat And the golden yield !
If I have kept my heart sweet,
Sweet as the cloud,
Flowers a-many then for me,
All blowing tenderly,
Following all with still feet
And bright heads bowed.
If I have kept my heart sweet,
Sweet as the rain —
Rain of winter, rain of May,
Rain across the brightest day! —
Then Mischances must' entreat My heart in vain.
[pgbrk] A DEFENSE OF THE NEW ORLEANS HEALTH AUTHORITIES
Covington, La., May 7, 1909.
EDITOR McCLURE’S MAGAZINE:
In the course of an article entitled “Guardians of the Public Health,” by Samuel Hopkins Adams, in your number for July, 1908, two statements are made relative to the handling of the Newi Orleans yellow fever epidemic of 1905 to which I feel I may take proper exception.
On page 247 Mr. Adams says:
As a matter of fact, Business Interests, when involved with hygienic affairs, are always a malign influence, and usually an incredibly stupid one. It was so in New Orleans, where the leading commercial forces of the city, in secret meeting, called the health officer before them and browbeat him into concealing the presence of yellow fever, lest other cities quarantine against their commerce. And “concealed” it was, until it had secured so firm a foothold that suppression was no longer practicable, and the city only averted a tremendously disastrous epidemic by the best-fought and most narrowly won battle ever waged in this country against an invading disease.
On page 242 Mr. Adams states:
When yellow fever broke out in New Orleans, it was the Marine Hospital Service men who, working quietly and inconspicuously with the local volunteers, mapped out the campaign which rid the city of the scourge.
In the year 1905 I was health officer of the city of New Orleans. On the evening of the 12th of July there were reported to Dr. Edmond Souchon, president of the State Board of Health of Louisiana, two cases of illness resembling yellow fever in the lower section of the city of New Orleans. I was called into a conference on this report.
There is an impression, not only in New Orleans itself but throughout the country, that knowledge of the existence of yellow fever in New Orleans was concealed from the world by the local health authorities in 1905.
As a matter of fact, the first suspicion of the existence of yellow fever reached the health authorities on July 12; and on July 22, only ten days later, as the result of an autopsy held on that date, the State Board of Health announced the presence of yellow fever in the city of New Orleans.
Previous to this date health officers of
neighboring States had been informed of the fact that the existence of yellow fever in New Orleans was suspected.
On August 8 the work of handling the epidemic was transferred from my department to the United States government, the transfer not being completed until August 12.
As health officer of New Orleans, my duties in connection with this epidemic began on July 12, when suspicion of the existence of yellow fever first came to me. Under the law of Louisiana, no authority other than the State Board of Health can officially determine and announce the existence of yellow fever. The reason for this law is the prevention of unwarranted and mistaken reports being spread abroad of the existence of quar-antinable diseases.
On July 12, the day on which I first learned of the possible existence of yellow fever in the city, I informed the publishers of the principal daily papers of this suspicion. Within the next twenty-four hours I conferred with a member of the Clearing-House Association of New Orleans, and told him that the local Health Board had no funds available with which to take proper preventive measures against a possible epidemic. The State Board could supply only a small sum for initial expenses.
Since the first scientific publication, in 1901, of the theory of the transmission of yellow fever by mosquitos, I had been a believer in that theory, as well as in the methods prescribed by the Commission of Investigation of the United States Army in Cuba for the prevention and extermination of yellow fever.
The Clearing-House Association of New Orleans met, and guaranteed an emergency fund of twenty thousand dollars.
Before this fund was voted I had begun the work of sanitating the district in which yellow fever was suspected. Within three days after July 12 the work of sanitation was well under way, and by July 22, the date of the public announcement of the existence of yellow fever, and the earliest date on which yellow fever was positively known to exist in the city and authoritatively declared, the work of sanitation and yellow fever prevention was as well under
339
[pgbrk] 340 DEFENSE OF NEW ORLEANS HEALTH AUTHORITIES
way as the funds and the forces at hand would permit, and the then obtaining conditions called for.
The period from July 12 to July 22 was the only period in which I had any knowledge of the suspicion of the existence of yellow fever in New Orleans, prior to the announcement of the existence of the disease. My official position did not give me authority to make such an announcement, even if I had been convinced of the existence of the disease. What I wish to make plain is that I was a sanitarian, and that as soon as yellow fever was suspected in New Orleans, and before it was announced or positively known to exist, every possible sanitary precaution was taken; that no pressure or intimation of pressure was brought to bear on me, officially or unofficially, to suppress knowledge of the existence in New Orleans of the disease; and that the fund contributed to meet the expenses of preventive work was accompanied by no conditions whatever.
Between July 22 and the first week in August the force of sanitary workers was increased as rapidly as men could be secured, instructed in their duties, and put to work.
This work was carried on along the lines subsequently followed out by the Federal authorities, with the consequent elaboration of the work made possible by the largely increased available funds. I was guaranteed only twenty thousand dollars for my work. Dr. Joseph H.
White, the U. S. Public Health and Marine Hospital Service officer, who succeeded me, was given a guaranty of two hundred and fifty thousand dollars with which to continue the work. I placed at his disposal, on August 8, besides material and supplies, an organized force of four hundred men actively engaged in prevention work against yellow fever.
There was never any difference of opinion between Dr. White and me either as to the general method adopted in this work, or as to the practical details of putting it into effect; nor was there ever any lack of harmony between us as to our ideas or methods in beginning or finishing the work.
On the contrary, realizing the extent of the epidemic, the necessity for raising a great additional sum of money to fight it, and the desirability of having this work in the hands of the Federal authorities,— knowing the natural and proper confidence the people of the country feel in the Federal control of epidemics,— I advocated and urged that the work in which I was engaged should be handed over to a national and disinterested authority.
Yellow fever in New Orleans, as Mr. Adams properly argues in his article, had, by the beginning of August, 1905, simply become a matter of national and international importance.
Sincerely yours,
Quitman Kohnke, M.D.,
Health Officer of the City of New Orleans, September, 1898, to September, 1906.